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JIMMY MAY IN 
THE FIGHTING LINE 




Then came an ear-splitting crash above them. 

[Page 361 






























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JIMMY MAY 'in the 
FIGHTING LINE 


BY 

CHARLES TENNEY JACKSON 

AUTHOB OP “THE CALL TO THE COLOBS,” ETC. 

T\0 



D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

NEW YORK LONDON 

1918 


Ltrjw 'S* 



Copyright, 1918, by 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 


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✓ 


Copyright, 1918, by 
The Sprague Publishing Company 


OEC 1 1 1918 


* 


Printed in the United States of America 


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©CI.A508501 


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CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. His First Big One 1 

II. Not in the I. D. R 11 

III. In the Flare Pit 42 

IV. Under the Top 75 

V. Close Work 102 

VI. Bunker Hole 129 

VII. Br’er Fritzie 158 

VIII. Out o’ Luck 185 

IX. The Road to Berlin 210 

X. Camouflage for Two 235 

XI. Meaning of the Croix de Guerre . . 261 

XII. Following the Boche to Battle . . . 275 

XIII. For the Folks at Home 288 

XIV. Carry On! 306 














































































\ 









A 




.'.'I M 


v 








LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


FACING 

PAGE 

Then Came an Ear-splitting Crash Above 
Them Frontispiece 

A Dazzling Light Was Flung in His Eyes . . 98 


There Came the Muffled Roar of a Whole 
Battery of the American “Four-point Sev- 
ens” 110 


He Stood Straight up in the Shelter Behind 
His Enemy, and Suddenly Dropped on Him 182 


vii 



JIMMY MAY IN THE 
FIGHTING LINE 


CHAPTER I 

HIS FIRST BIG ONE 

T HE big, gray touring car stopped in the 
dust of a white road on the chalky hills of 
the Champagne, and the bearded young French 
captain got out. After him came the regimen- 
tal adjutant, and Corporal Jimmy May’s senior 
company commander, and then Lieutenant Mil- 
ler of Jimmy’s own platoon. 

“And now, Americans,” laughed the young 
Frenchman in excellent English, “at the top of 
this hill I will introduce you to the world war! 
Come!” 

The group started up the green slope along 
a line of poplars which hardly yet had recovered 
from the devastation, wrought when the gray 
hordes of the Huns swept down on France, only 
1 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


to be driven back from the Marne in the days 
of September, 1914, that seemed now so long 
ago. 

Corporal Jimmy May sat with the chauffeur 
in the front seat of the big car and looked long- 
ingly up at his regimental officers. It was the 
week after the landing of the first contingent of 
the American Expeditionary force, and he had 
been taken along as orderly with these few offi- 
cers who had begun to be sent on up to the front 
for a preliminary glimpse of the battle before 
they had to settle down to the long months of 
training their troops. 

“Say,” grumbled Jimmy, “I wish they’d have 
taken me up that hill ! It’s tough to be probably 
the first infantry private in all General Persh- 
ing’s army who’s been able to get right up to 
the front as yet, and then not see it! Me — first 
doughboy in all the bunch — and they let me stick 
here in this motor car!” 

He looked glumly at the driver who didn’t 
know any English. 

“Oui! Mats non — ” put in the driver apolo- 
getically. 

“Oh, cut it!” said Jimmy, “I’ve been under 
2 


HIS FIRST BIG ONE 


fire before — plenty of it in Mexico ; and I’ve seen 
a bit of rough work besides! I don’t believe 
Lieutenant Miller intended to leave me behind 
— yet they didn’t tell me to come on. But they 
didn’t tell me to stay!” 

He watched the group of officers — olive drab, 
tall Americans, and sturdy bearded Frenchmen 
in horizon blue, now far up the hill to the north, 
and then he threw a legging discontentedly over 
the side of the car. Corporal May had a strict 
sense of discipline — but wouldn’t it be a bully 
thing to say he was the first private of the in- 
fantry line who’d seen the German foe? 

Then Jimmy yelled with sudden delight. In 
the seat of the tonneau he spied his lieutenant’s 
field glasses! The officers had been chaffing 
about one another’s binoculars all the way up 
from the brigade billets where B Company was 
in camp. 

“Sure he’ll want ’em!” whooped Corporal 
Jimmy, “and I’m the lucky bucky right on the 
spot to gallop there with ’em!” 

Over he went, the field glasses in hand, and 
dashed away up the poplar row. He had lost 
sight of the officers now, and when he got to the 
8 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE, 


top of the first ridge he looked expectantly this 
way and that. Then he went down across a cab- 
bage field where the round heads were already 
growing among the grass green shell-holes of the 
campaigns of last year and before, up the next 
slope and into a small wood. Still he didn’t see 
his superiors. 

“Must be on that next slope,” muttered Jim- 
my, “all right, I can go far as they can!” 

But he was surprised to look out on a smil- 
ing, green and wooded country rolling northwest- 
ward, and with no signs of war unless one looked 
closely here or there, in the immediate fore- 
ground, for old shell-holes or riven trees. No 
trace of the French lines even was visible, 
though Jimmy’s party had passed many lines of 
transport, — camions light field batteries, am- 
bulances and companies of poilus on the main 
traveled roads from the billet villages where the 
Americans were. But in reaching this ridge of 
the Champagne they had come up a very rough 
stretch, so Jimmy concluded that |he transport 
lines did not pass here. Standing in the little 
wood, the slope breaking at his feet down to the 
gentler lands, he took Lieutenant Miller’s field 
4 


HIS FIRST BIG ONE 


glasses and searched the innocent-looking coun- 
try northward. 

In the hazy distance he picked up dark lines 
converging to the left. Presently he thought he 
saw irregular markings, too, at right angles to 
these. Then he looked to his left and right 
along the broken ridges; still no officer party in 
sight. 

“This war,” mused Jimmy, “looks peaceful as 
nothing! If Perky and Tolliver, and my old 
bunkies of the Mexican border days were up 
here, they’d just naturally curl up in this grass 
and take a snooze. It isn’t as exciting as chasing 
down spy plots back home on the Intelligence 
detail, or dodging the U-boats on our pleasing 
run over to this little old Europe! Hi — what’s 
that?” 

For he heard a distant reverberation some- 
where northward. Then another shortly — a low, 
choky cough, arid after awhile it seemed like muf- 
fled thunder. If Corporal May, waiting intently' 
for his first gun of Armageddon, had closed his 
eyes to this peaceful, sunny spot in France, he 
would have sleepily sworn it was a summer storm 
arising lazily. 


5 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 

“But — first gun!” muttered Corporal May, 
“fine, — I got that much ahead of the bunch back 
there drilling away at the bomb and bayonet 
stuff anyhow! But Lieutenant Miller — I’ll get 
a call-down if I don’t find those officers soon and 
hand him these glasses ! Or if they go back to the 
machine and I’m gone wild-goose chasing off 
without orders, well — it’ll be the first demerit for 
Corporal James Edward May since he joined the ^ 
colors !” 

So Corporal May turned back, as his first sight 
of the world war was so disappointing. He had 
just got back among the young trees on his way 
down to the road where the car waited, when he 
heard a shout somewhere. It seemed to his left, 
and turning out of the brush, Jimmy glanced up. 
He saw the young French captain in the gray- 
blue; he saw his own company officers and the 
regimental adjutant. They all suddenly began 
to shout at him, and then they turned and dashed 
back to the ridge. Jimmy saw them stop as 
suddenly; then he was amazed to see them fade 
away, one by one, apparently into the ground. 

“Well, I’m jiggered!” gasped Jimmy, “where 
6 


HIS FIRST RIG ONE 


did they go to — and where’d they come from? 
Oh ... a hole in the ground — sure!” 

But he didn’t know what the matter was. 
Only, the last man to disappear so mysteriously 
into the soil of France was that lusty bearded 
young French captain himself, and he went down 
still yelling at Corporal May, but so far away 
that Corporal Jimmy could not tell what it was 
about. But the French officer waved and pointed 
as he disappeared. 

Jimmy looked up, and around. He seemed to 
hear some strange, far moaning in the sky; not at 
all like the joyous bark of the American field 
guns that he had heard once or twice when he 
was chasing Villa in Mexico. But he knew what 
it was all right. 

“Hi, a shell somewhere!” he said to himself 
interestedly, “and it’s for me up the ridge to see 
this first boy! Chased the officer chaps to shelter 
all right, but I don’t just see any hole that’s 
handy for me!” 

So he dodged back the way he had come intend- 
ing to go out through the woods and give that 
smiling, peaceful enemy country ahead another 
“once-over.” That whining song in the air was 
7 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


stronger, and seemed to be passing over; and then 
suddenly a new note blotted this out — something 
that grew with the roar of an express train dash- 
ing over a culvert ; and then there came the most 
tremendous racket that young Corporal May had 
ever heard in his life. He went flat on the ground 
as if something had bumped him from head to 
foot — which something had. 

After a moment he looked up through the 
young poplars to see a dun, dusty, smoky cloud 
as big as a city block spreading up and out. It 
was just over where his officers had dodged into 
a hole like rabbits, apparently, and Jimmy got 
up, dusted his clothes and stared incredulously. 
Gradually he made out the smoking lines of an- 
other hole — a bigger one than he had dreamed a 
shell could make. It just hurt his pride to think 
that he, a two-years’ service man, could be so 
completely surprised and rattled by anything. 
He walked on slowly towards this mass of reddish 
earth which continued to give off spirals of 
smoke ; and presently he saw forms on the other 
side — his beloved company officers and their 
French guide, hurrying down the other slope 
towards the road. 


8 


HIS FIRST BIG ONE 


When they saw him they halted for a second, 
shouted at him and went on. Jimmy May started 
to run around that shell crater, and joined them 
a hundred yards below it. Blithely, to show how 
unconcerned he was, he began swinging Lieu- 
tenant Miller’s field glasses as he came to them. 

“Here, sir! You left them in the car, sir, and 
I ” 

“Oh! That’s why you left the car. Corporal, 
without orders?” 

“I — suppose so, sir! And to tell the truth, 
I wanted to be the first private soldier, if pos- 
sible, who saw the front lines!” 

“Yes, sir — very good, sir!” Lieutenant Miller 
retorted, “only our French friend here says that 
the Germans have a habit of poking a duet of 
twelve-inch shells onto this ridge daily just prob- 
ably to discourage its use as an observation 
point back of our line.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“And you wanted to be the first man in the 
Army to see anything, eh? You came mighty 
near being the first man the Army would have 
to cable home about as among those missing — 
9 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


for you’d have been merely missing. Corporal 
May, if you’d kept on strolling.” 

“Yes, sir,” grinned Jimmy, “but I’m glad — 
it was a good way to be introduced, sir — I 
think!” 


CHAPTER II 


NOT IN THE I. D. R. 

T N a dark, little room of a low-ceilinged stone 
house, one of a long row straggling along 
a crooked, cobbled street of a village in France 
which must be unnamed until Uncle Sam is 
through with Mr. Bill Hohenzollern, a sun- 
bronzed, lean-bodied, young corporal of the 
Regulars sat at a table trying to write out a 
guard roster which he had unwisely volunteered 
to do to assist his overly busy top sergeant 
to-day. 

Corporal Jimmy May scrawled a bit and then 
felt of sundry long, unhealed scratches on his 
hands, on both hands. Then he felt of some other 
gashes on his elbows. He reached down and felt 
of one on his stiff left leg. 

“Ouch!” he murmured. “Maybe it can’t be 
done as those two wise old birds bluffed, but I 
think it can. I’m going to sneak out after 
retreat when it’s kind of dusk and practice once. 

17 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


Then I’ll entice Perky and Tolliver into rag- 
gin’ me again before the wire detail, next time 
we’re out there; and then, me, I’ll walk out in 
front of ’em, chipper as a lark, grab the vault- 
ing pole and show ’em how a track man could 
hop over a whole wire entanglement of the 
Boches. Not — ” he murmured again, dubiously, 
“that it’s of any practical military use, but just 
to show those croakers.” 

Just then a shadow darkened the single door 
of the orderly room. Jimmy looked up with some 
irritation. The company clerk was sick and in 
hospital. The top sergeant had been worried 
by the company officers, who, in turn, had been 
worried by the battalion command, as to certain 
new details and sections which had to be ar- 
ranged for certain novel methods of trench 
attack — all theory and training as yet. For 
though B Company had been quartered these 
many weeks back of the lines where they could, 
at times, hear the distant reverberations of the 
mighty guns, so far they had not fired a shot or 
had a glimpse of an enemy. So Sergeant Mil- 
bank, with his fellow sergeants, had been both- 
ered fair in picking and choosing men for the 
12 


NOT IN THE I. D. R. 


specialized and final training ere the battalion 
went forward to get its baptism of fire along with 
the rest of Pershing’s picked front-line troops. 
Not only every platoon, but every squad was se- 
lected and tested as to individuals — rifle grena- 
diers, light machine gunners, hand bomb throw- 
ers and bayonet men — and it was largely up to 
the noncoms as to who was best for any particu- 
lar bit of training. 

So, as Corporal May was too stiff and cut up 
from these mysterious scratches to be out train- 
ing his own “mopping up” squad, he had been 
asked to get out some of the routine clerical work. 
Not another soul w T as about the orderly room, 
and few in the quarters, which quarters were a 
strange assortment — stone houses of the French 
peasants along this quaint little deserted street, 
barns and outbuildings, any place that could hive 
the hard-working Sammies while at their inten- 
sive grind. 

“Hello, there!” bawled Jimmy, for he thought 
it was some one of the decrepit old Frenchies who 
policed around the quarters while the companies 
were out at drill, “Francois! No dustin’ in here 
13 


iMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


now! Go away! Pcirlez-vows vamoose? Nix. 
Meaning: beat it!” 

“Say,” was the eager response, “I think I 
know your voice! Must be B Company, all 
right — and Corporal Jimmy!” 

Corporal May sprang erect and stared. He 
knew that voice too! 

Slowly he advanced to the figure in the door- 
way, a smallish figure garbed in a horizon-blue, 
ragged coat and a battered American campaign 
hat, both away too large altogether, as were the 
canvas leggings on the feet of this nondescript 
and international soldier of misfortune. Cor- 
poral Jimmy, ever the neat a^d trim olive- 
garbed infantryman, to whom any military dis- 
array was an abomination, looked the newcomer 
over again, and again he gasped : 

“Hi, there, kid! And what are you doing 
in France?” 

He reached to grasp a grimy paw which the 
boy thrust out from under his poilu’s discarded 
tunic. Jimmy stared again. 

“Warty, it isn’t possible! Didn’t I see you 
last hanging around the fence outside the trans- 
port docks in New Orleans?” 

14 


NOT IN THE I. D. E. 


“Sure you did! You remember I told you 
I’d make it! Couldn’t get on your ship though, 
or you’d have heard of me before this, Cor- 
poral.” Warty grinned, much satisfied with 
himself. “I made up my mind that this Army 
couldn’t shake me — or B Company, either, but 
I did have a time of it. They took me on the 
old Momus finally as mess boy, and I worked 
over all right. But, gee, getting up here was a 
job!” 

“Well, if you did it without any authority, 
you’re a wonder, and what’s more they’ll ship 
you right back to the disembarking port. And 
lucky if they don’t clap you in jail on top of 
it!” 

Warty laughed. “Not if my luck sticks! I 
was knocking around with these transport fel- 
lows when I ran onto that quartermaster cap- 
tain that you introduced me to the time we had 
the scrap with the dynamite spies on the Mis- 
sissippi levee — remember? Well, this captain 
certainly treated me fine. Of course he laughed 
when I told him I wanted to enlist in your bunch. 
And I reckon I’d have had to go back on the 
transport with the mess boys again, only she 
15 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


broke down, and had to be docked. That was my 
piece of luck. I hooked onto this quartermaster 
captain who was so mighty busy that he had to 
use me in his clothing depot. Worked there 
six weeks. Corporal, scheming all the time how 
to get up to the lines. Then Captain Frazier 
sent some of us off on a mule convoy to a little 
burg somewhere back here, and there I hooked 
up with a newspaper correspondent who gave 
me a lift in his car here, when I happened to men- 
tion your company officers.” 

“Deserted your transport and quartermaster’s 
job, did you? They’ll fix you, Warty, for this.” 

“They got no hold on me. I wasn’t even a 
civilian employee, regular. Just a volunteer, and 
no pay either — yet !” Warty grinned cheerfully. 
“What’s more, they can keep the pay if I can 
stick up here near the fightin’ chaps.” 

“Fine chance!” Corporal Jimmy looked over 
Warty’s comedy clothes, picked up only he knew 
where. “The Intelligence Office will send you 
back, unless, perhaps ” 

“Say it,” cried Warty, “unless you fix it up!” 

“Don’t know as I want to. What business has 
a kid like you up here where it’s ail work, and 


NOT IN THE I. D. R. 


after that into the trenches for us? I suppose 
if I told ’em that you were the kid that kept the 
dynamiters from blowing out the Mississippi 
levee, and helped the Regulars to run down the 
wireless spies, and on top of that were clever 
enough to beat your way overseas and clean up 
to the front line, why, I suppose maybe you 
might interest ’em.” Corporal Jimmy stared 
sternly at Warty. “Mind you — it wouldn’t save 
you from being chucked back. But as long as 
you’re here — take off that idiotic coat of yours, 
and make a bluff at doing something. If you 
could run a typewriter ” 

“Sure, I can run a typewriter.” 

Jimmy was feeling of his stiff fingers. “You 
little river rat, where did you ever run a type- 
writer ?” 

“Not much. Used to bat away on the purser’s 
on an Ohio packet, just for fun. Same thing in 
France, ain’t it. Corporal?” 

“You make three copies of these rosters — and 
make out forms for these requisitions, like these, 
see? My fingers are all cut up!” 

“What’s the matter with ’em?” 

“Never mind, son. You sit down and make 
17 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


a noise like you were useful. When the officers 
see you in this orderly room they’ll make an aw- 
ful roar. Our company clerk is laid out, and 
the top sergeant is over his ears in work. So, 
if you kick in and help out, maybe B Company 
could board you a few days — until headquarters 
hears of you and chases you back to your ship.” 

Warty looked over his job, rolled up his big 
sleeves and grumbled away as he worked. 

“I could have done this over in that little old 
U.S.A.,” he said. “Say, is that a gun whoopin’ 
away off there?” 

“It is. A Boche howitzer, forty-two centime- 
ters, maybe. Recollect, please, that they could 
throw a shell fourteen miles right down on this 
orderly room, if they felt that way — and hustle 
with that roster.” 

“Gee!” murmured Warty, and his eyes stuck 
out with fearful joy. 

Corporal May limped out and sat down on a 
stone bench. Down the deserted, sunny street 
he could see a platoon of his battalion going 
through their everlasting bayonet fencing with 
the instructor who tapped them smartly from be- 
hind with his ringed pole so that they must turn, 
18 


NOT IN THE I. D. R. 


charge and transfix the rings — high, low thiust, 
right and left parry, jab and butt strokes. And 
further out other squads were attacking the dum- 
mies, in line and down in the trenches, ripping 
them up as they leaped, and charging on for the 
next defenders. Not a lean, brown man of the 
lot who was not, by now, in the keenest physical 
condition, alert with the months of training and 
eager to be put to the test these lusty October 
days. Already there were rumors flying up 
and down the line of billeted villages that the 
American artillerymen were at it with the 
French 75’s. 

“What’s the matter with us?” growled the In- 
fantry. “Fit as fiddles, and hard as nails — that’s 
how we are! Why don’t they send us in?” 

Officers and some picked noncoms had already 
been in — to the French front-line trenches in this 
quiet sector, but that was not what the B Com- 
pany doughboys and the rest of them meant at 
all. They wanted to go in, and stick in, holding 
their own line and worming forward in some 
big drive on the Germans. That was why they 
“ate up” their work so ravenously, just as they 
did the hearty, base camp grub to which Jimmy 
19 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


now watched them coming, swinging along in 
squad column with the day’s grind half done. 

When the ranks had been dismissed in the 
street and the hungry mob had scattered for bar- 
racks to divest themselves of rifles and field kits, 
Jimmy saluted his ranking company officer. 

“A new clerk, sir, seems to have arrived. 
Headquarters doesn’t know anything about it 
either, but perhaps I could explain. Do you re- 
member, sir, back home — when the regiment was 
at Jackson Barracks, the boy that I brought in? 
Special duty, sir, with the Intelligence Depart- 
ment, and I called attention to this youngster’s 
part in running down the wireless plotters?" 

“Oh — Warts?” murmured Lieutenant Miller; 
“but what the mischief ” 

Corporal May explained simply. “I think 
Captain Wilson of the Q.M.C. would vouch for 
him, sir. Had him employed down there any- 
how.” 

“Keep him busy, then, ’til we see,” retorted 
the hurrying drill officer. “And you, Corporal — 
able to go out again on the wires?” 

“Yes, sir. They patched me up all over, sir. 
I’m ready!” 


20 


NOT IN THE I. D. R. 

And the worried company commander 
laughed. 

The whole company had laughed. When 
Jimmy limped down to his squad’s barracks, 
Privates Perkins and Tolliver, especially, 
laughed. Jimmy saw them now out of the cor- 
ner of his eye. Of all his squad of eight men, 
Perky and Tolliver were the only members from 
the old Mexican Border days. Like Jimmy him- 
self — and Jimmy was only twenty this year — 
they felt like veterans along with the six-months’ 
drilled rookies who had been mauled into shape 
behind the lines all this summer. So Perky and 
Tolliver, because they had soldiered along with 
Corporal Jimmy in Sonora and had mingled 
their beans and bully beef with his on many an 
outpost, could take liberties with a beloved 
N.C.O. 

They began it once more, innocently, when 
Corporal May slid a sore leg in over the bench 
at mess. Private Perkins reached for the tea 
past the Corporal’s ear, but he looked at 
Tolliver. 

“Tell me, bucky,” began he, “what is the rec- 
ord in this highfalutin’ high vault of which col- 
21 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


lege men is so proud? How far could a lad jump 
now?” 

“I don’t know,” murmured Tolliver, “but I 
know this. Perky: No matter how high he 
jumped, he’d have to come down. That’s what 
hurted ’em — this cornin’ down business on a 
bunch of barbed wire the same which was put up 
to keep Fritzies oujt and not for college men to 
jump over.” 

And the six-months’ rookies of Squad Twelve 
laughed guardedly. They had all seen it. Three 
of them had helped cut, unbutton, dig and lift 
their corporal out of the mess. Just now their 
corporal was reaching serenely for the beef stew. 
He couldn’t deny it. The whole platoon, in one 
of the rest periods, while drilling over the wire 
defenses, had heard the argument which Perkins 
had started. He had opined that what Persh- 
ing’s expeditionary force needed right in front 
was a line of college high jumpers and pole vault- 
ers, so that instead of laboriously pounding up 
the Boche entanglements with artillery and then 
sending wire cutters on to clear the way for the 
charging troops, these star letter men would be 
over the top in two jumps. He knew that 
22 


NOT IN THE I. D. R. 


Jimmy May had once been a prep school vaulter; 
and perhaps that was why, after airing all he 
didn’t know of track athletics, Private Perkins 
winked at Private Tolliver and declared of course 
such talk was foolish, because no “college man” 
could jump the four line “apron and festoon” 
defense which the wire detail had just completed. 

“Might be done all right,” Corporal Jimmy 
had put in casually. “But what for? The 
Fritzies would drill ’em full of holes in mid-air !” 

“No, they wouldn’t. The Fritzies would be 
so surprised at a lot of college jumping jacks 
sailing up over the wires that they’d forget all 
about shooting. But you couldn’t do it, Cor- 
poral — and besides, it ain’t in the Infantry Drill 
Regulations.” 

“We’re doing a barrel of tricks every day,” 
retorted Jimmy, “that aren’t in the I.D.R. 
When it comes to getting through the wires you 
can jump, cut, crawl, hurdle — any old way, long 
as you do it quick and find cover the other side 
until the slow ones get to the line.” 

“It would be a sight, now wouldn’t it, Perky?” 
mused Tolliver. “Only it can’t be done. A col- 
lege man couldn’t clear that mess of wires. I 
23 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


guess we’ll stick to the I.D.R. and the new 
French stuff.” 

“Jump ’em?” retorted Jimmy, interested at 
last. “If I got the right take-off and gave a 
shove at the right instant, I could drop clean 
over. It’s less than eighteen feet broad and not 
four high. Of course it’s not pole vaulting — it 
would be jumping with a pole like I’ve seen the 
kids do.” 

“Kids could, all right,” muttered Perkins, 
complacently, “but these here college men 
couldn’t — it ’ud be too original for ’em. Also 
too high, and too broad. They’d have to have 
yell leaders and referees ” 

“Say,” broke in Jimmy, “I’ll bet you a dish 
of exchange ice cream I can hop that wire stuff 
the first try. That’s no hard trick. Trying to 
crawl through is what gets you. I don’t mean 
with your kit, of course, and gun and all. If I 
did, there’d be nothing to it but organize some 
classy first-line pole jumpers and take the wire 
defenses on a run!” 

“What you mean,” said Perky, “is that you 
can jump ’em — honest?” 

24 


NOT IN THE I. D. R. 

“Any fool could do it,” retorted Jimmy, un- 
guardedly. 

“Well, you didn’t, Corporal. You landed on 
your back in the third festoon and, I blush to 
relate, you was stuck.” 

“I had a field pack and a pole that was no 
good. Never mind there, bullies. Fall to that 
slum and fill up. You’re going to get double 
drill this afternoon. Next week, maybe, you’ll 
have something more than sticking straw dum- 
mies, too!” 

And the mess snickered a bit and mumbled 
over their chuck. 

The Corporal seemed sort of “het up.” He 
couldn’t endure being laughed at; and besides, 
the officers and the French instructors also had 
seen this ridiculous affair and had laughed. 
Worse than that, Lieutenant Miller had “bawled 
him out,” the first time in Jimmy’s whole Army 
life. He went through the afternoon drill and 
trench instructions with a subdued and curt air, 
which boded no good for any laggard in his 
squad. After recall he looked in the orderly 
room, remembering then that he had totally for- 
gotten Warty Wallace, the stowaway and 
25 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


hanger-on who had actually done the impossi- 
ble and followed the Army to France. 

“Hi, kid!” he yelled, “did the officers scalp 
you ?” 

“They did. They was rough, Corporal. But 
they don’t know what to do with me, for they 
can’t let me loose to run around, you see. So 
they gave me a whole pile of company business 
to copy, and when the top sergeant got through 
abusin’ me, he seemed glad to watch me work. 
I guess he knows more about bawlin’ out rook- 
ies than he does typewritin’, doesn’t he?” 

“They’ll turn you over to regimental head- 
quarters soon as they get the work out of you. 
When I’m off after retreat, you come down past 
the little bridge and I’ll wise you up to some 
things that’ll help you to stick on and maybe 
keep out of the guardhouse.” 

“Thanks,” said Warty, “and say — is that a 
German gun boomin’ away off somewhere? Gee 
whiz! — think o’ me gettin’ to hear ’em!” 

Corporal May strode on to his barracks. 
Down the long stone street the fellows were 
idling, cleaning rifles, singing and indulging in 
their usual horseplay bred of high, animal spir- 
26 


NOT IN THE I. D. ft. 


its, good food and the wonderful building up 
of body and nerve that the intensive drive of the 
Army game was giving them. It would be an- 
other game soon, reflected Jimmy; cold and wet 
and dark and danger. The scattered billets up 
and down the sector to be assigned the Sammies 
were already gossiping of the “Big Day,” when 
they would go in among their eager F rench com- 
patriots and relieve the heroes of the Marne. 

At the end of the street Corporal Jimmy came 
on Private Perkins indulging himself in an un- 
official foot inspection. “Ain’t so fat as you were 
in Mexico,” commented Jimmy tartly. “Hon- 
est, you can count your toes now, can’t you. 
Perky?” 

“Yes, just discovered a funny thing. Got the 
same number of toes on one foot that I have on 
the other. That’s because I never got none tore 
off tryin’ to jump a barbed wire entanglement.” 

“Good-night,” murmured Jimmy; “you got a 
lot to learn yet.” 

He went on down to the little stone bridge 
and leaning on it looked off to the dusk over the 
silent hills. The marks of the battles that fol- 
lowed the great German retreat had already 
27 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


faded from this region. The slopes were green 
and brown and even a row of war-torn poplars 
along the ridge were struggling back to life. In 
the gentle rise of land between were the train- 
ing trenches reconstructed and used for the train- 
ing of the Sammies these many months ; and over 
that ridge ten miles or more away was the fight- 
ing line which the poilus held against the enemy 
beyond the Aisne. 

Sitting on the bridge, swinging his feet down 
to the pebbles, Jimmy awaited Warty Wallace, 
who heaved a sigh of relief as he approached. 

“Anyhow, they can shoot me to-morrow, but 
to-day I had a square eat, Corporal Jimmy. 
Say, you can hear the guns from this place, can’t 
you?” 

“Been rattling away some time now. Still, 
they call it quiet up front. I had one look-in 
close up. Whole country up there is scratched 
to cinders.” 

“I sure want to see it.” 

“Ain’t a chance. They’ll keep you right here 
at the base camp, even if they don’t send you 
back to port.” 

“But first, I want to hear one big whooper go 
28 


NOT IN THE I. D. R. 


off right close up. Did you ever see a Boche 
war plane, Corporal Jimmy ?” 

“Sure. They drove in over this line a couple 
of weeks ago and dropped bombs near the artil- 
lery depot. Took four bombs to kill one Mis- 
souri mule. Warty.” 

“Sure. I’m from Hannibal, Missouri, myself. 
Corporal. I’m surprised that it didn’t take ten 
bombs per mule, because we have tough mules 
back home. Regular old Maudes, they are, and 
if one of these German aviators ever flew low 
enough a Missouri mule would kick him clean 
back to Berlin.” 

Jimmy laughed. His grouch was lightening 
under Warty’s chaff. He had great reason to 
love the lad, for Warty had helped him turn two 
good tricks back home. He jumped up and 
knocked the dust off his leggings. 

“Come on, Warty. Let’s stroll over to the 
training field. I want you to see something. 
Bring that pole I chucked under the bridge. I 
hid it there on purpose.” 

“Pole?” Warty dragged out a long and 
rather heavy stick which Jimmy took and 
29 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 

“hefted” doubtfully. Then he swung on up the 
road. 

They reached and dodged the first communica- 
tion trench running into the yellow clay under 
cover of the creek brush. Then they came to an- 
other, the reserve trench, marked by lines of sand- 
bag parapets which gave away to other zigzag 
trenches leading on up to the rest trenches and 
the shelters, and from these there were other 
deep and narrow pits winding up past jutting 
traverses and pockets to the first-line works where 
were the loopholed and concealed firing stations 
for the Infantry squads. Jimmy led the way on 
past these deserted spots to the gray blur of wire 
that marked the outer line of the defenses. When 
they reached the wires. Warty looked back and 
gasped. 

Of all the elaborate system capable of shel- 
tering in this one little sector an entire defending 
battalion of twelve hundred men, hardly a sign 
was visible. Here and there the sandbags just 
protruded, and that was all. Across the creek 
a mile away the little village, where the regi- 
ment was billeted, showed through the autumn 
orchards. Quiet reigned supreme. Even the 
30 


NOT IN THE I. D. R. 


faint artillery fire was just a murmur against the 
night wind. 

Corporal Jimmy laid his pole against the first 
wires and looked at his friend grimly. “Kid, I’m 
going in training. I’m going to pull off some- 
thing for that gang — just once, casual-like, as if 
it was all in the day’s jog with me. Going to 
do it to-morrow in a resting period, and then go 
back and sit down and say nothing. And they 
won’t say anything. They’ll just know I did it, 
that’s all.” 

“What’s that?” queried Warty, puzzled. 

“Going to take a little running hop with this 
pole and swing over these wires.” 

“Bust your neck, that’s what you’ll do. And 
— listen!” 

“Oh, they’re always banging away up there! 
When the wind’s right you hear it plainer, some- 
times, than you do others. That’s why they train 
us closer and closer to the front — so all these 
German funny noises don’t bother us when the 
big smash comes.” 

“But this was different. Sounded like a ” 

“You go stand at the end of the first section 
— front a little, so you can tell me how much I 
31 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


clear the fourth post line. I want to be sure 
there’s no bobble when I show ’em to-morrow.” 

Warty obeyed. The wire entanglements were 
built in fifty-foot sections with a passage 
between, a crooked passage not visible to the 
enemy, and supposed to be covered neatly by 
the defenders’ machine guns in case of attack, 
but leaving a gate in case of an advance by one’s 
own shock troops. Warty went through this 
opening and looked down the maze of tangled 
wires. 

It was what is called a four line “apron and 
festoon” fence. Four lines of parallel posts 
sticking out of the ground some four feet were 
first driven, and then, to these post rows, four 
barbed wires were loosely strung. Then diag- 
onal wires from the top of one post to the bottom 
of another were put on. Then the “apron wires” 
were laid from one post line to another, zig- 
zagging loosely across, for a tight wire is easily 
snipped by a wire cutter. Then in the nest of 
crossing wires, formed by the aprons between 
the post rows, the curly “festoons” were flung — 
all loosely and without order as they reeled off 
the wire spools; and if a soldier jumped the first 
32 


NOT IN THE I. D. R. 


line he landed in a tangle out of which he must 
jump or straddle to another, and after that an- 
other ; and if he cut the first wires he had to crawl 
on and dissect the second and third, leaving 
dozens of barbed and twisting ends to trap and 
tangle in a fellow’s pack and coat and weapons. 

“I guess,” muttered Warty Wallace, “that 
even a Missouri mule would have his doubts 
when he looked this mess over. He’d long for 
mother, home and the big red apples when he 
saw this Army fence! Say, Corporal Jimmy! 
You aren’t goin’ to try to hurdle this stuff?” 

“It isn’t in the I.D.R.,” retorted Jimmy, “but 
I’m going to hook over it with this pole, just to 
show ’em. Watch me, now!” 

“Listen,” mumbled Warty, “I heard a — some- 
thing!” 

But Corporal May had gone back some paces 
measuring the pole for a grip, and then looking 
at a spot for a good take-off to plant his pole 
just this side of the first post line. It had to 
be far enough off to give him a good swing as 
he dropped the pole and projected his body on- 
ward to clear the fourth line. He had purposely 
chosen a point where he got a bit of downhill 
33 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


rush. Even then he must shove himself some 
eighteen or twenty feet out or drop in the fes- 
toons as he had done on that other humiliating 
occasion which was yet vivid in the minds of the 
company. 

“Maybe not,” he called out, “but I don’t mind 
a jab or two more — long as I don’t come down on 
my face!” 

“Listen!” said Warty again, “something’s 
coming!” 

But Jimmy May had dashed lightly, swiftly, 
on over the sod. He jabbed his pole down in the 
exact spot he had picked out, lifted himself pow- 
erfully, climbing hand on hand on his pole as 
it reached the perpendicular, and then he gave his 
lithe body a tremendous jerk forward, let go 
and went like a catapult — right on and down — 
into the same old maddening tangle of curling 
wires that he did before! 

Warty heard the crash. Then he heard Cor- 
poral Jimmy. 

“Wow! Ouch! Stung again — it beats all, but 

next time ” He was flat on his back kicking 

and tearing at the barbed wires. He was stung 
and gashed on shoulders and elbows, but he was 
34 


NOT IN THE I. D. R. 


madder than he was hurt. Only he was thank- 
ful that certain individuals of B Company had 
not been invited to this party. He had plenty 
of adhesive medicated tape and he could plaster 
himself up and wait a while. 

“Hi, Warty!” He was fighting to get the 
wire off his shoulder. “Come pry this loose! 
You keep still about this, too.” 

“Get out!” Jimmy saw Warty’s freckled face 
staring wildly down at him, then up skyward. 
“Looky! An airplane!” 

Corporal May relaxed and looked up. He 
didn’t see a thing at first, but he heard a snarling 
hum somewhere. It was over the ridge, and 
then suddenly he heard the bark of a field gun 
off to the left, and another, and another. The 
French anti-aircraft guns from a hilltop sud- 
denly picked up and blazed away at the invaders. 

“There’s two!” yelled Warty — “three! There’s 
another circling towards camp! I told you I 
heard ’em buzzin’! There’s guns cuttin’ loose 
everywhere!” 

“Get me out o’ here!” roared Jimmy. 
“Lemme see!” 

He struggled and fought. Warty leaned over 
35 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 

the diagonal wires of the low fence to drag at 
the tangle of festoons inside. The more he pulled 
the deeper Jimmy sank and the more taut the 
holding barbs pulled. 

“Wire clippers in my pocket!” gasped Jimmy 
— “get ’em!” He tried to twist over on his side. 
Then he did stare. Coming like a rocket down 
along the ridge and appearing very low, sped 
a German airplane. Warty Wallace stopped 
and stared. That machine, with the black crosses 
on its planes, looked bigger to Warty than any 
mule in Missouri. The racket of its motor was 
nerve shattering. And everywhere up the line 
of hills the French anti-aircraft stations were 
snarling away at the other planes. They heard 
an explosion somewhere. But Corporal May 
ceased his struggles and lay still, staring up. 

“Warty, drop on your face — quiet! If that 
fellow sees any one down here he’ll think these 
trenches are manned and he’ll bomb ’em!” 

Then came an ear-splitting crash above them. 
They heard the scream of bullets whirling down, 
thudding the ground, even singing against the 
maze of wires. 


36 


NOT IN THE I. D. R. 


“Shrapnel !” gasped Jimmy. “They’re trying 
to get this fellow!” 

The big war plane had circled in the dusk, 
out over the hills, and then back towards the vil- 
lage. White puffs broke above and below the 
German but he sailed grandly on. Once the 
boys thought he was gone, for the shrapnel puffs 
hid him completely. Then they saw him against 
the last red in the sky — but he was coming back 
like a fox terrier seeking a lost rat trail. 

“He’s looking for the camp again!” yelled 
Warty. 

“He’s coming right over the trenches,” yelled 
Jimmy, “right on over us ! Hope they quit shoot- 
ing at him until ” 

Suddenly Warty Wallace leaped over the low 
wires, landing right down on Corporal May. 
“Right over us !” he gasped, “and a — bomb !” 

Jimmy couldn’t see. But he could hear. First 
the roar of the airplane’s motor, and then, 
drowning that in one terrific burst of sound, an 
explosion that rocked the earth. The next min- 
ute the earth, indeed, seemed to rise up and bury 
them in a surge of dust and clods and sticks. 
They felt the wires jerk and strain; and then, 
37 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


over the noise of falling dirt, the snarl of 
the war plane’s motor as it sped on into the 
dusk. 

“Get off my legs, Warty,” moaned Corporal 
May; “are you hurt?” 

“No, I ain’t hurt. Only some knobs on me 
big as eggs where clods hit me. There’s half a 
ton of dirt on us, Jimmy!” 

“Get out of here. They’ve gone now. The 
guns’ll chase ’em. It was you drew that fellow’s 
bomb. He thought there was a nest of us.” 

Warty crawled painfully up and got the wire 
cutters from Corporal May’s pocket. He clipped 
and pulled until Jimmy crawled out. There 
was a hole, big as a house, it looked, right behind 
the wire defenses. 

“Warty,” said Jimmy solemnly, “I suppose 
you jumped over on top of me thinking you’d 
stop that bomb if it was going to hit me?” 

“O-oh — maybe!” said Warty. “It was a good 
deal like your pole vaultin’ — can’t be done, but 
I — tried it.” 

“Warty,” repeated Corporal Jimmy, “you 
haven’t any more sense than one of your Missouri 
mules!” 


38 


NOT IN THE I. D. R. 


“No more than a veteran Regular who won’t 
stick to the I. D. R.,” retorted the volunteer. 

Corporal Jimmy limped away, jumped the 
sanubag parapet of the training trenches and met 
the first of some rather excited soldiers of B Com- 
pany who had streamed out to the scene of their 
first encounter with an aerial raider from over 
the Rhine. They gathered about and stared in- 
terestedly into the bomb crater and listened with 
some disgust to the recital of Warty Wallace’s 
participation in it. They didn’t take much to 
this idea of having a civilian clerk, and camp fol- 
lower at that, get into the limelight with the 
popular corporal. 

Corporal May’s officers listened, some with 
grins and some with military disapproval. They 
shook their heads over Warty. 

“How old is this young protege of yours, sir?” 
inquired Lieutenant Miller. 

Jimmy couldn’t just remember; he didn’t want 
to very badly. Warty had done the impossible 
and followed B Company to France, as he had 
valiantly promised long ago after his volunteer 
services for his country on the New Orleans’ 
levees, and Jimmy wanted the boy to get a square 
39 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


deal. The company officers already knew of 
Warty’s persistent and shrewd endeavors to 
stick with his soldier friends. 

“I suppose,” murmured Lieutenant Miller, 
“this thing can be overlooked. The kid — he’ll 
weigh up to requirements, and as he has no one 
to object or to give assent either, to his enlist- 
ment, he might be taken in. In one sense he 
might be — eighteen.” 

“Boy,” called out Captain Banion sharply, 
“just how old are you, anyhow? Your case will 
have to be put up to the division headquarters, 
and maybe all the way back to Washington, be- 
fore you can get in the army at all — and you 
can’t stay up on the line unless you are. How 
old are you, anyhow?” 

“Eighteen,” answered Warty Wallace without 
a bat of his eye. 

“When?” 

“The minute that President Wilson declared 
war on Germany, sir. I just growed up quick 
on the jump — suddenly.” 

The group of infantrymen snickered. Cor- 
poral May repressed a smile. Captain Banion 
40 


NOT IN THE I. D. R. 


turned away to hide his grin. The dapper lieu- 
tenant shrugged. 

“Eighteen — hum! But there seems to be no 
opposing evidence. What’ll we do about it, 
Captain Banion? He’ll get us in trouble up here 
with our company on inspection.” 

“Report his case fully to headquarters. Mean- 
time let him act as clerk to the top sergeant, or 
mess boy, or have him police around the orderly 
room. Keep him busy — and under Corporal 
May’s eye, seeing that May is responsible for him. 
Very unmilitary — very.” 

The officers went on to their barracks. Cor- 
poral May turned to Warty in the gathering 
night. “You’re in luck, kid! Now, don’t spoil 
it, and get us both in trouble.” 


CHAPTER III 


IN THE FLARE PIT 

A FTER that came days and weeks of ardu- 
ous training for the boys of B Company. 
Quiet, uneventful weeks as far as the great war 
was concerned, for no more German raiders 
zoomed up over the line of hills to bomb the train- 
ing quarters or fields. Even the distant rumble 
of the great guns which came at times, when the 
wind from the north was strong enough, died 
away intermittently. 

The soldiers of the first expeditionary force 
were scattered here and there by regiments or bat- 
talions along behind the lines where shattered 
hamlets and wasted fields still showed where the 
German invasion had reached its high tide, and in 
the region of France behind the great fortresses 
stretching from Verdun to Belfort whose 
strength the Kaisermen could not shake. And of 
course the great question of the doggedly-work- 
ing doughboys of B Company was — when would 
42 


IN THE FLARE PIT 

they move up a bit to get a taste of real front- 
line work? 

By squads and platoons, under the eyes of alert 
French officers working with their own efficient 
commanders, the regiment dug and crawled, 
bombed and bayoneted the dummy defenders of 
the training trenches; had drill in gas mask de- 
fense, and were put to specialized work with the 
machine guns — all stiff, continuous grind, with- 
out thrills, nothing but the grim reminder that, 
up a few miles to the north of this pleasant sum- 
mer land of France, they would soon be called to 
demonstrate their worth against the great organi- 
zation of the last conquering Emperor. 

Jimmy May felt this silent, dogged spirit; it 
showed itself in the splendid eagerness to learn 
everything which was evident in every American 
soldier from his Colonel down to the shortest 
rookie in the rear rank of the last squad. He 
knew that the pride of his native land was uphold- 
ing them all before the eyes of the veterans of 
France and England, and he was grimly con- 
tent. 

Eight weeks of the intensive w T ork went on. 
They all felt like veterans themselves now, but 
43 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


Jimmy and his old comrades of the Mexican bor- 
der knew better. The regiment was more than 
half new service men, and to the others most of 
the new warfare was an experiment as yet. So 
Jimmy and Rube Tolliver and Perkins, who had 
all faced death and hardship before in the Villa 
campaign, did not put on any airs with the novices 
of their squad. 

Jimmy hardly had time to see his protege. 
Warty Wallace, save as he ran into him now and 
then, in the orderly room. Warty, as he grin- 
ningly said, had managed to “hang on by his toe 
nails” to B Company. As the easiest way out of 
the difficulty, the commanding officers had rec- 
ommended that he be enlisted — though it was 
doubted if Warty was more than sixteen. But 
weeks went by and no word came back from 
general headquarters which, as Jimmy May re- 
marked, was probably thinking of other matters, 
so Warty, to his growing mortification, was com- 
pelled to be the “goat” for all the work that a 
taciturn top sergeant loaded on him with no rat- 
ing at all, even as a civilian clerk. 

Poor Warty used to grumble to Corporal May 
that he seemed destined to be a sort of roustabout 
44 


IN THE FLARE PIT 


forever, for his beloved country, even as it was 
back in his days as a river rat of the Mississippi 
levees. Even Corporal Jimmy grew curt and 
military these times. The sense of great things 
impending made the personal matters fade away 
among the fellows who really took thought of 
what America’s aid meant just now to the Allies. 

Then the eventful day came when the battalion 
was suddenly sent up in the line to be inter- 
spersed by squad and platoon among segments 
of the veteran French. A “quiet sector” they 
termed it, but still, just over their front trenches 
the boys of B Company knew the enemy lay. 
Slowly they took up the work of the night 
patrols, and it was after the second of these quiet 
forays that Jimmy got into his most perilous 
adventure so far in France. His old bunky of 
the home service years was missing after one mid- 
night crawl to the wires. It was as Sergeant Mil- 
bank said when he made his report to head- 
quarters by the trench telephone : 

“Ye see it’s this way. Captain. These three 
men have always kind o’ hung together in B Com- 
pany — ever since old Mexican days, and, when 
the old organization was split, always them three 
45 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


kind o’ stuck to each other, so when two of ’em 
think that the other fellow may be lying out there 
in No Man’s Land with his head cracked, it’s 
hard to hold ’em in this ditch, sir.” 

“Nothing came back at all from the patrol?” 

“Nothing, sir. It’s black as tar over the top. 
The lookouts said once they heard kind of a little 
skurry over beyond the fourth wire section, where 
there were some little shrubs, but no shots, nor 
nothing. But the patrol’s an hour and a half 
overdue, and the orders were strict to come back 
along the left and give us the come-in signal. It’s 
Tolliver that’s worrying the squad in my hole, 
sir — and Perkins and May pleading to go find 
him and fetch him if he’s hurt.” 

There was a long pause down in the rock- 
hewn, bomb-proof shelter where the senior cap- 
tain sat at a wooden table across from the com- 
pany clerk who waS no other than the freckled- 
faced, warty-knuckled, one-time stowaway, 
known at times as “Kid” Wallace, and again as 
“Warty.” 

Warty pretended to be mighty busy over some 
papers. He had not yet got over his apprehen- 
sion that he would be suddenly ordered to clear 
46 


IN THE FLARE PIT 


out and go back to the base camp, if not into 
actual custody, for he had no business up in the 
front lines. That was perfectly true, but as yet 
the industrious Mr. Wallace had been too useful 
to dispense with, so headquarters overlooked him. 
Warty was dead determined to please everybody 
and be so essential that the officers’ room simply 
couldn’t do without him. The officers knew this 
perfectly well, too, and the way they worked 
Warty was a caution. He never got a chance to 
stick his head out of the hole, or get up in a firing 
trench even though these were not three hundred 
yards distant; and the officers were grimly sure 
that he never would. Never, never — for a civil- 
ian clerk, and a stowaway boy at that, had no 
business to be here whatever. 

Lieutenant Miller continued to pull his mus- 
tache and gaze absently at Warty, while he held 
the telephone. Then he spoke gruffly: 

“Hook me onto battalion headquarters — 
Major Beckwith.” 

Warty made the connection with alacrity, and 
got the senior officer. He was mightily interested 
in the snatches of this matter involving his be- 
loved long-legged hero, Corporal James May of 
47 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


B Company. He got Major Beckwith on the 
line and the two officers consulted. Then Lieu- 
tenant Miller swung around in his cracker-box 
chair. 

“All right. Get the sergeant again, Warty!” 
Then, into the telephone up front to the firing 
area: “Send four men of your squad under Cor- 
poral May, and give them strict orders to — say? 
Hello? Hello, there? Hel-lo!” 

He was talking to absolute silence. Then the 
young lieutenant tartly flung the receiver down. 
“Third time it’s out of whack to-day! Wallace, 
I’ll give you a verbal order, and you get the Sig- 
nal Corps, too, and explain that the wires here 
are always out of order. My compliments to 
Captain Anderson, but be firm about this tele- 
phone being absolutely rotten. But first you go 
up the communications and ask your way at the 
second cover trench where you can get to the 
Third Platoon of B Company in the firing sec- 
tion. And when you get hold of Sergeant Mil- 
bank, say to him that permission is given to send 
four men of the twelfth squad under Corporal 
May out to reconnoiter. This detail is limited 
strictly to thirty minutes and it must not go far- 
48 


IN THE FLARE PIT 


ther to the right than the second flare pit, and it 
must under no circumstances fire a shot, engage 
in combat or do anything except ascertain, if 
possible, why the patrol stays so long. Now, sir, 
can you relate all that clearly and with force to 
Sergeant Milbank so that he will do the same to 
Corporal May?” 

“Yes, sir!” cried Warty, dashing up and hunt- 
ing his hat, “every word of it — ver-battum!” 

“Good! But I doubt it. But remember that 
men’s lives might depend on it, sir — further, 
that this position might ; and beyond that the sec- 
tor — the Army — the campaign — the war; and 
your country!” 

“Ye-es — sir!” gasped Warty at the trench cur- 
tain, his eyes popping out as the young officer 
rapped out this solemn warning. 

Once outside in the frosty air of the trench, 
he tumbled against an incoming orderly and 
nearly knocked him flat, and when he turned the 
first traverse he butted into a sentry, so intent 
was he on not forgetting a word of that order to 
the sergeant. 

“Corp’rul Jimmy — four men — thirty minutes 
— no fightin’ — second flare pit, look for patrol — 
49 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


Major Beckwith — orders — ” Then Warty 
dodged among a drowsing line of blanket-rolled 
soldiers, humped against the wall, waiting to take 
their relief, and awoke them to profanity and 
sleepy movements. 

He went on about the traverses of the commu- 
nicating trenches, the frozen sandbag parapets 
high above his head, and reached the cover trench 
under whose wooden and dirt roof the supporting 
squads of B Company were ensconced, also close- 
wrapped in their blankets. 

The sergeant in charge passed him with a growl 
at being disturbed, and Warty went on up the 
zigzag narrow ditch until he came to the traverse 
which shut off the connecting way to the first- 
line firing trench. There he was directed to Ser- 
geant Milbank who was fuming over the useless 
telephone. 

[< Tm from Company headquarters, sir, and 
Lieutenant Miller, and he says to send Corp’rul 
May over with four men to look for the first 
patrol. Back in thirty minutes, and to pass the 
word down the line another party is out front. 
No fightin’, sir, and ” 


50 


IN THE FLARE PIT 


“Hey?” snorted the sergeant, “what’s this talk, 
you little runt?” 

“Orders, sir!” retorted Warty, his eyes rolling 
around to take in as much of this envied firing 
post as he could before he had to dodge back. All 
he saw were frosty dirt walls and the stars over 
the top, and there was absolute silence every- 
where. “Orders and mebbe men’s lives depend 
on it, the Army, your country, sir — and the whole 
works !” 

The big sergeant stared. And behind him 
came a burst of low, suppressed laughter. Cor- 
poral Jimmy May came out of the gloom and, 
shifting his rifle to another mittened hand, he 
bent to stare down at the courier. 

“What’s this little guy givin’ me about savin’ 
the country?” demanded Sergeant Milbank. 

“It’s Warty!” retorted the corporal. “Got up 
here at last, eh? Five months ago, sitting on the 
Mississippi levee, he swore he would.” 

“Well, he better beat it back,” growled the old 
drill sergeant. 

“Corp’rul Jimmy, I was sent here with orders 
that you go out somewhere with a squad o’ men, 
and find Tolliver’s patrol.” 

51 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


“All in now — except Tolliver,” said the ser- 
geant. “They must have got Tolliver, some- 
how.” 

“But orders you say, Warty — for me ” 

“Yes, sir — from the major, too. You’re to go 
out and find Tolliver, Corp’rul — the sergeant’d 
have had his orders direct if the telephone wasn’t 
busted.” 

The sergeant looked doubtful. “Tolliver’s 
only man missin’,” he began, “and mebbe that 
would change things, if they knew.” 

“Look here,” retorted Jimmy, “Tolliver’s my 
old bunky. And this kid know’s what he’s say- 
ing. Sergeant, I want to go now, before they 
change any orders. Before they find the rest of 
the patrol’s got home all right, but not knowing 
a thing about Tolliver.” 

“Well,” muttered the sergeant, “go on then. 
You better have those men crawl out one at a 
time, take distance and lie down just within hail 
of each other, and you take the last position. 
Then you work around, and you can report down 
along the file. We don’t want to bust in on any 
German party and get cut up just for one man, 
much as I’d hate to give Tolly up. Watson, 
52 


IN THE FLARE PIT 


Martin, Nichols — you go over after Corporal 
May — keep whispering distance apart, and get 
that lampblack into your mugs and lie close. 
Hear me?” 

There was a murmur in the lookout trench. 
Men lying forward to stare between the sandbags 
along their frosty rifles, turned to look as the 
chosen four prepared to go over the top. First 
they slipped from their overcoats and packs, and 
then they blackened their faces so that the keen- 
est-eyed sniper, perhaps worming his way out 
across No Man’s Land from the German 
trenches, could not see the lighter blur on the dark 
that would mark an opponent and furnish target 
for an instant hail from the machine guns. 

Painstakingly Sergeant Milbank inspected his 
charges before he let them depart. Four 
grotesque, grimy-faced shadows the four soldiers 
appeared, but Sergeant Milbank was not satis- 
fied. He w r rapped rags loosely around each 
man’s bayonet lest a star bomb up from the 
enemy’s works catch a gleam of steel and doom 
the patrol to death. When he was satisfied with 
his handiwork, Milbank turned to Warty Wal- 
lace. 


53 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


“You report, kid, that the reconnoitering party 
has — hello? Where’s that messenger?” 

“Must have pulled out. Froze up, I guess.” 
Jimmy glanced at his black and gray ghosts al- 
ready lying on their stomachs across the parapet. 
“All ready! Come on, follow in line, just so you 
can see the hump of the man’s back ahead of you. 
No talking, no crawling anywhere right or left, 
without orders from me.” 

He swung lightly up, knelt a moment to stare 
into the gloom, then walked on rapidly but with 
stealth for the first twenty yards. Then he sat 
down and waited. The first file man of his patrol 
presently was visible back through the dark. 
Jimmy cautioned him down and then went on. 
When the Sammies’ wire defenses showed up, he 
crawled along to the zigzag opening, waited for 
the file to reach him and then he went through. 
After that he and they, too, must crawl, crawl 
as Uncle Sam had taught them to crawl, without 
humping above the ground line any more than 
was needed; crawl, kicking on softly with the 
right leg and dragging the left, head always 
down, rifle across left elbow, right hand ready 
for a spring up if a Boche suddenly uprose to 
54 


IN THE FLARE PIT 


fight it out with bayonets. And if a flare or bomb 
went up there was nothing to do but bury one’s 
face in the dirt and lie there motionless, trusting 
that the sharpshooters and machine-gun men 
would mistake these gray bumps for shell-torn 
earth and not living men. 

Between the barbed wire of the Sammies and 
the entanglements of the Germans, stretched 
some hundred yards of level but shell-riven 
ground. It was out here that the first patrol 
had crept along, seeking to discover if the 
Boches were working to advance their firing 
trenches or up to any similar mischief. Whis- 
pering the word back along the patrol to lie 
spread fanwise just outside their own wires and 
await his preliminary scouting, Corporal May 
crawled out alone into No Man’s Land. Some- 
where in that empty and deadly space in the 
seven-hundred foot area before his battalion sec- 
tor, his lanky and silent comrade must be lying, 
killed, wounded, or perhaps taken stealthily into 
the German lines a prisoner. 

Jimmy reached a cloddy hole and wormed 
down into it. Now he could see nothing, either 
before or behind him, save the blackness of the 
55 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 

earth where it touched the starlight. And then — 
yes, he did see something! A blur, a movement, 
to his right. His fingers closed around the small 
of his rifle stock, his right leg drew up under him 
for a spring, if this was a Boche bayoneteer. The 
patrols preferred not to use their rifles in an en- 
counter in No Man’s Land; the racket would 
draw a deadly fire that would wipe out everybody 
alike. Jimmy could make out a creeping figure 
now, coming at right angles to the path he had 
himself followed. He stared surprisedly. The 
fellow, whoever he was, was going back towards 
the American lines. Bapidly, too; but Jimmy 
knew that none of his own patrol was beyond him. 
It must be the missing Tolliver! Hastily Jimmy 
crawled about and started across his retreat, not 
daring to speak. 

The figure paused presently. Jimmy, too, 
stopped, not ten feet on his flank. He watched 
the other and then gasped to himself : 

“That’s no soldier! If he is, he’s a dub, and 
ought to be back with the dub rookies!” 

For the mysterious one wasn’t doing the mili- 
tary crawl to suit Corporal Jimmy’s disciplined 
taste. So Jimmy slipped up and put a hand out 
56 


IN THE FLARE PIT 


on the other, grabbing a dirty blouse and jerking 
it. He knew it was no Boche either, for he was 
unarmed, and none of the veteran Kaisermen 
would be lumbering along in this fashion. When 
Jimmy saw a white, dim face turned to him in 
surprise, he almost fainted. 

“Warty! You crazy fool!” 

“Hi!” whispered that wearied and chalky- 
faced clerk, “you, Jimmy?” 

“What you doing here? Thought you went 
back! Ain’t you no sense?” 

“I give you fellows the slip while you were 
blackin’ your faces. I knew this was the only 
chance I’d ever have to get out here.” 

“Don’t you know — ” gasped Jimmy, “that it’s 
against all orders?” 

“Nobody told me not to. Captain never even 
told me to hurry back.” 

“Of course not, you lunatic! Whoever 
dreamed you would sneak over the top? Your 
pasty, freckled mug shows up like a paper bag. 
Wonder they ain’t nailed you with a machine 
volley!” 

“I’m a first-class sneaker. And I — found your 
man.” 


57 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


“Found — Tolliver?” Jimmy’s whisper was 
Weak with incredulity. 

“Just luck. He’s dead, I guess. Lyin’ on his 
face in a hole. I shook him and he never moved. 
He’s not forty feet from here, and right before 
him I put my hand on a w r ire.” 

“Wire?” 

“A little single wire, almost buried in dirt. 
What’s that?” 

Jimmy straightened out by Warty’s side and 
put his mouth near the lad’s ear. “Warty, that’s 
our trip wire that works the flares ! If you’d have 
sprung it you’d have played the mischief!” 

“Gee!” breathed Warty, “I was afraid it was 
charged with electricity! I thought maybe Tol- 
liver had been killed by it.” 

“Oh, you fool ! They’ll give me the dickens for 
having you out here — me and the sergeant!” 

“Wasn’t your fault. I knew better’n ask any 
permission.” 

Jimmy choked his wrath. “Come on, now. 
Straight to where you found Tolliver. Got to 
get him home. Got to get out of here before 
some Boche takes a notion to touch off* a mortar 
bomb or shoot a star. Keep that white face of 
58 


IN THE FLARE PIT 


yours turned away — towards our lines. All the 
time — hear me? Don’t look towards the Ger- 
mans. There’s dozens of lookouts watchin’ this 
way — every minute, every second, night and 
day!” Jimmy punched Warty in the ribs. “Lead 
on, now — but face down!” 

“Yes,” gurgled Warty, “but how far can they 
see — warts?” 

Jimmy gasped impotently. He made up his 
mind he w T ould beat this civilian clerk to a pulp 
once he got him back to the rest camp. He 
crawled on by the other’s side, imagining all sorts 
of dire and justifiable punishments for this im- 
pudence. Presently Warty stopped and kicked 
a foot back to Jimmy’s helmet. After waiting 
a watchful moment Jimmy crawled to where 
Warty could breathe in his ear. 

“Here’s the lad. Looked like he was hurt and 
just managed to crawl to this shell hole. Say, 
he’s warm yet, Corp’rul.” 

Corporal May’s hand was up to the cheek of 
the limp form lying in the depression. When he 
took it away, blood was on his fingers. He 
couldn’t hope for much from this. Tolliver must 
have been struck down in the dark by an enemy 
59 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


patrol not an hour ago. Slowly Jimmy drew 
himself up by his friend’s body. There was only 
one thing to do. He would have to get Tolliver 
across his back and then stagger across No Man’s 
Land until he met his patrol, and then on to the 
trenches. If the enemy discovered it and rid- 
dled them all, well — that was all in the game. 

He was not at all grateful to the luckless 
Warty for happening to discover Tolliver. It 
was just fool luck, and Jimmy would have done 
it himself later. He was enraged at Warty for 
the whole mad venture. He was drawing Tol- 
liver’s limp arm out to get it across his own neck 
and work his shoulder under the body, when he 
felt W arty kick him sharply on the knee. Slowly 
Jimmy relaxed and looked around. And he 
didn’t see Warty. He saw something else that 
made the hair rise on his neck. 

Dimly against the starlight towards the Ger- 
man trenches he saw a man standing upright. 
Upright and listening and watching. 

Jimmy and Warty Wallace and the senseless 
Tolliver were flat on their stomachs in a shallow 
shell depression not twenty feet from the armed 
German patrol! 


60 


IN THE FLARE PIT 


Jimmy almost ceased to breathe. A patrol! 
And of course there were others! Perhaps this 
was the point of a real midnight attack on the 
American lines. The whole dark background 
might be filled with creeping Boches. The big 
clods of the shell-hole were not stiller than Cor- 
poral May and Warty Wallace. The frosty 
wind actually seemed hot on Jimmy's brow. 
Stealthily he lowered his head to the dirt and lay 
there. 

Presently he heard a mutter, very low, but it 
was from the watcher. He seemed to be speak- 
ing back to some one. Then he came on a few 
feet, stopped, looked, listened. Then he knelt 
down. Jimmy could just see his crouched shoul- 
ders. The German seemed to be searching for 
something. 

Then the matter flashed on Jimmy’s confused 
mind. The patrol was searching for the trip 
wire! The American trip wire that had been 
laid out many nights ago by furtive working par- 
ties, and which ran to the little narrow pits which 
contained the flares. There were four of these 
hidden contrivances out beyond the Sammies’ 
wire entanglements, along the battalion sector, 
61 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


crude but eff ective devices consisting of a plank 
balanced in a narrow pit, lying horizontally when 
at rest, and containing at one end a tin reflector 
before which was fixed a magnesium flare cart- 
ridge. From this cartridge a quick fuse led to 
the base of the pit where it was affixed to a cap. 
Now at the other end of the balanced plank, lying 
hidden in the pit, was an iron weight, and this 
heavier end was held down by a touch-and-go 
trigger to which the trip wires were attached, and 
these trip wires ran out for sixty feet each way 
from the flare. So delicately hung were the trig- 
gers that the least jerk on the wires released the 
weighted end of the plank. It shot down in the 
pit, struck the primer, and the fuse ignited the 
magnesium flare just as it arose six feet above 
the earth and shot a powerful light on all the 
ground towards the enemy. The reflector kept 
the light on them while shielding the defenders 
from every ray. 

The patrols were searching for the flare pits. 
They had found the trip wires, but these they 
dared not touch, for any movement would spring 
the triggers and ignite the brilliant lights, be- 
* 62 


IN THE FLARE PIT 


traying every move to the Sammies. And in- 
stantly Jimmy knew what was on. 

They were ready to attack in force. The 
Boche patrols were merely clearing the way, si- 
lently, and this man kneeling not eight yards 
from Corporal Jimmy was seeking to put that 
signal flare out of business so that the assault 
could reach the American entanglements at least 
before it was discovered. 

“He’ll cut the fuse, or jam the pivot,” thought 
Jimmy. “Then he’ll sneak back. Maybe they 
spoiled the other flares, too. Got to stop him!” 

He tried to pierce the darkness beyond the 
groping figure of the German. He put his ear 
against the wind, listening for their footsteps, 
sure that the first wave was over the top of their 
trenches and lying down perhaps even beyond 
their wires waiting for the advance. The faint 
reverberation of a gun far off to the left was all 
that broke the stillness ; the artillery on this sector 
had been merely waiting for some days, content 
with keeping the other side’s operations down to 
a minimum. But Jimmy knew that the ever alert 
battery commanders were ready and with the 
range, and that at any sign of a raid from either 
63 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 

side the fieldpieces and machine guns would hurl 
death into the disputed area. Here where he and 
Warty lay, midway between the wire entangle- 
ments, the danger was as great from one side as 
the other. 

But the Boches were coming at last! That 
was the great, big fact that kept beating on his 
brain. The patrols had surprised Tolliver alone, 
and had evaded the others ; then, when the Sam- 
mies’ reconnaissance was ended, their advance 
parties had crept out to disable the signal flares 
and allow the assaulting wave to creep nearer be- 
fore the final attack. 

The German patrol was creeping on hands and 
knees across the front of the shell-hole where 
Warty and Jimmy lay. The wire was there, and 
leading to the pit some ten yards to the right. 
And Jimmy, revolving the chances desperately in 
his mind, concluded that the German must not 
be allowed to disable the danger signal. 

“I can spring it myself,” thought Corporal 
May; “if the Boches are out in front, then the 
flare will show ’em to our fellows — they won’t get 
any nearer to our lines !” 

But to spring that flare meant to rise, dash 
64 


IN THE FLARE PIT 


towards the enemy’s line, seize the trip wire and 
release the trigger. Then he would have to seek 
cover instantly before the fire blazed out from his 
front trenches upon the invaders. Slowly he 
twisted about so that his arm stole over Warty’s 
shoulder. 

“Listen, kid. Don’t move — whatever starts, 
now — don’t stick even your little finger out of 
this hole. And if Tolly isn’t dead, and should 
come to his senses, keep him down. Hold him 
down by force! And wait for me — don’t come 
out no matter what happens !” 

“What — ” whispered Warty, “what you after 
now?” 

But Corporal Jimmy had gone out of the hole, 
dragging himself carefully along, trying to keep 
his eyes on the outline of the patrol to his right. 
If the fellow discovered and rushed him, they 
would have to fight it out, silently and alone, 
that was all. The supporting Boches might come 
to aid the scout, or they might not. If they did, 
Jimmy was a goner. But now he was seeking the 
trip wire. He couldn’t see the patrol at all now; 
and then his hand found the tiny wire with the 
dirt scattered to conceal it. And stooping, 
65 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


Jimmy jerked it and then ran straight back to- 
wards the shell-hole to get out of the flare’s 
radius. But nothing happened. Jimmy stopped 
in his tracks. 

“The Boche has got to the flare!” he gasped. 
Then, wheeling to his right, he dashed silently 
for the pit. He reached it just as a shuffling fig- 
ure turned from the hole. The German thought 
it was one of his comrades apparently, coming 
from his own side, for he did not stir until Jimmy 
was right above him. Only his head and body 
to the waist were above the flare pit. 

Jimmy flung up his rifle for a butt stroke across 
the German’s skull. But he heard a muffled cry, 
the fellow dodged flat in the pit and Jimmy’s 
rifle butt cut the air. And instantly he dropped 
the gun. It was no good for what he had to do. 
He whirled and dropped straight upon his 
enemy’s head and shoulders — as he thought. But 
the other man whipped to one side and Corporal 
May fell feet foremost into the flare pit. He 
was up in a flash, and the two faced each other 
silently. The German had a whistle between his 
lips, and he had started a low, purring alarm with 
it, when Jimmy dashed it away. Then the Boche 
66 


IN THE FLARE PIT 


smashed Jimmy in the face, leaning over the 
plank arm of the flare; and Jimmy in his turn 
dealt a blow back that staggered the patrol. He 
was now trying to get a trench knife from his 
belt, and Corporal May closed with him, arms 
locked over arms ; and the two fought in silence. 

Jimmy was trying to close his hands about the 
other man’s throat, intent on preventing him 
from summoning aid. The German was fighting 
to keep the pit flare from igniting, and to disable 
his enemy in any way, fists, feet, fingers, so that 
he could keep the danger signal stilled. He was 
a heavier, older man than Corporal Jimmy, but 
this, in the narrow hole, was a disadvantage. 
When Jimmy staggered him with a butt of his 
head the patrol half fell in the pit alongside the 
flare arm, and he literally stuck between the clay 
walls. Jimmy was on him then, jumping and 
jamming his own body onto the other. The Ger- 
man grunted and struck helplessly up. 

“You’re down!” gasped the Corporal; “now, 
that flare arm — let it go!” 

For the other hung desperately to the plank, 
trying to keep it horizontal alongside his body. 
And Jimmy was trying to smash it down so that 
67 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


the other end with the magnesium cartridge 
would go up. If he could explode that flare now, 
the trick would be up, whatever it was. The 
Boche knew it as well as Corporal May. He 
ceased striking at Jimmy’s face and hung to the 
wooden arm. And Jimmy began to pummel him 
viciously with straight, hard blows full on the 
mouth. The German was game. He did not 
raise a hand from the flare arm, but took the 
savage punishment as long as he could. Then 
slowly, with a gasp, he began to relax his hold. 
No human being could endure the flailing Jimmy 
handed him. Suddenly, with a guttural cry, the 
Eoche dropped the wooden arm, fought himself 
to his feet and struck back at Corporal May. 
And Jimmy was waiting for just that moment. 
He threw himself forward with all his weight, 
forced the arm down between his own body and 
the German’s, and then he felt the heavy hammer 
iron strike the percussion primer. There was a 
flash of burning fuse in the other end of the pit, 
and then, like lightning, the magnesium light 
burst out. 

The German leaped across at Jimmy with an 
oath. And again the two fought like rough-and- 
68 


IN THE FLARE PIT 


tumble schoolboys in the pit mouth. But the 
Bodies’ trick was done. Jimmy heard a cry 
somewhere, and he was conscious that the intoler- 
able light, six feet above his head, was throwing a 
vast radiance over the German lines. Arms 
locked about his enemy’s neck, he dragged and 
pressed him lower; and over the pit’s edge he 
saw now, in the magnesium’s glare, the shadowy, 
skulking figures of a line of enemies. Their as- 
tonished faces shone white in the light. Towards 
the American lines it was pitchy dark. And then 
a little spurt of fire leaped out, another and an- 
other, all along from every firing post. And sud- 
denly the clatter of a machine gun awoke far to 
the left, and then back of it the bark of a trio of 
three-inch guns. 

Jimmy tugged mercilessly to drag his prisoner 
below the pit’s edge. It was death for them both 
to be above. And the last glimpse he got of the 
German assault wave was of groups and single 
figures breaking from the line and fleeing back. 

But Corporal May had no time to gaze upon 
the weird night battle going on above him. He 
had forced and beaten his man down flat on his 
69 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


back in the bottom of the flare pit. The German 
raised his hands at last. 

“Kamerad!” he begged, “I surrender.” 

Jimmy staggered to the end of the pit and 
sat down. He couldn’t get out while the star 
bombs and the flare mortars made the whole of 
No Man’s Land as light as day. He watched 
the bursts of shrapnel. 

“Anyhow,” muttered Jimmy, “that’s a sur- 
prise raid that was beaten at the start! I hope 
Warty had sense enough to keep flat in his hole!” 

It was an hour before the alarmed Sammies let 
up on their fire. When the last fitful bomb had 
died dow r n, Jimmy crawled to the shell hole. He 
discovered something that made him w r ant to 
whoop joyfully. Tolliver lay with his eyes open, 
and Warty was dripping water from the soldier’s 
canteen on a ragged cut upon his head. 

“When they got me, I don’t know,” said Tol- 
liver. “Must have clubbed me in the dark! But 
that bombardment brought me to the earth 
again.” 

“Some fireworks!” whispered Warty Wallace; 
“wouldn’t have missed it for anything. Scared 
me out of a year’s growth, Corp’rul Jimmy!” 

70 


IN THE FLARE PIT 


“Out of here!” ordered Corporal Jimmy; 
“crawl home now, and quick! Can you make it, 
Tolly, alone?” 

“Guess I got to. Little weak on my pins, 
but ” 

“I think you have got to, for I’m bringing in 
a prisoner! First one for B Company, and he 
gave me a pretty fight!” 

Jimmy watched his two friends crawl away in 
the dark towards the Sammies’ lines. Then he 
went exultantly back to peer down in the flare 
pit. 

“Hey, you,” he whispered, “Fritzie, come on 
out o’ there !” 

Jimmy stared down. The flare pit was empty. 
And Corporal May lay on his stomach and 
growled, the most disgusted Sammy in all Persh- 
ing’s forces. 

“Stung!” he murmured. “Now that gang back 
in the rest trenches will swear I was bluffing!” 

Then Jimmy wearily began the long crawl 
back to the first-line trenches where he found a 
big sergeant gazing hopelessly at Warty Wal- 
lace, and listening to that individual’s account of 
it. 


71 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


“Can you beat it?” queried Sergeant Milbank. 
“What’ll we do with this kid now? He’ll be too 
chesty to be officers’ clerk after this ; and you and 
me, Jimmy, will get an awful skinnin’ for ever 
lettin’ him go over the top !” 

But in the warm commendation which Cor- 
poral May’s exploit won from the officers when 
the report of the patrol was made and vouched 
for, their dereliction was not mentioned. Warty 
Wallace was the one who got the censure. He 
was ordered detached from his clerical job in 
B Company’s orderly room and sent back to 
brigade headquarters. Very much crestfallen 
and fearsome for his career, was Warty, too; and 
Corporal May felt sorry for the lad. But when 
the battalion was sent back a few miles to a rest 
camp for ten days, Jimmy was surprised one 
morning, to have a short, healthy young rookie 
walk in on him, salute with a mocking grin and 
then let an unmilitary yell. 

“Get onto this,” cried Warty, slapping his 
khaki-clad legs. “I’m a soldier now, yes, sir! 
They kept me around the Y quarters a week, 
trying to make up their minds to slate me there 
for good, I reckon. They made me work, too — 
72 


IN THE FLARE PIT 


everybody makes me work, wherever I turn up 
— and then finally one day this Y. M. C. A. man 
handed me an order — yes, sir, Corporal — a regu- 
lar military order — telling me to report to the 
medical examiners, and all. Went through like a 
top, Corporal Jimmy — but when they got to my 
age, there was a kind of silence. I hated to lie 
— Jimmy, you know that. So I just said sort of 
a gulp — and the young doctor he sighed and 
scratched over some papers and then he sat back 
looking at me. He’d been told about me, I 
reckon. Seems like the whole military adminis- 
tration, whenever I buck up against it, sort of 
winks and looks the other way. But me — I’m 
no blamed civilian any more — I’m a soldier 
now!” 

“That’s tough on the Army,” commented 
Jimmy, dryly, “everybody’ll be catching warts 
from you !” 

“G’wan, now, Corporal! Don’t josh me! I 
want to get assigned to B Company. J ust now 
they got me in a sort of refit squad along wi% 
some fellows who just got out of hospital and 
are picking up the work again. But when your 
73 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


bunch goes up front again, I want to be with 
’em!” 

“Sometime, when General Pershing isn’t busy, 
I’ll speak to him about it,” retorted Jimmy, “and 
look sharp, there, now! There comes an officer! 
See if you can come to the position of a soldier 
and salute him!” 

“Watch me,” whispered Private Warty Wal- 
lace, stiffening up like a ramrod, eyes front ; and 
the forefinger of his right hand jerked up to his 
new hatbrim as the officer passed. Corporal May 
stood like a statue, then snapped his own arm 
down again. 

“Private Wallace,” he said, “you’re a soldier 
now. We’ll cut out the joshing!” 


CHAPTER IV 


UNDER THE TOP 

/CORPORAL JIMMY did not see the over- 
seas rooky which the American Army had 
acquired under protest, as it were, for some time 
after the flare pit adventure. Private Warty 
Wallace was assigned to a new training contin- 
gent of the more recently arrived troops; while 
Jimmy, after the ten days on rest, was sent back 
with his battalion to the front trenches. The fel- 
lows were eager to be up and in it again, espe- 
cially as it was rumored that now they would go 
“on their own,” and not be interspersed with the 
veteran French soldiers so carefully. It meant 
that they were earning the trust of their higher 
command and the alert instructors. 

So, one raw and rainy night B Company 
swung off in column of squads on a muddy road 
that led to the first communication trenches. At 
first these were mere depressions stretching out 
through a rough field, but they deepened, grad- 
75 


Y MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


.ally, first to the Sammies’ waists, then to their 
shoulders, and on, until they led into the nar- 
row ways which zigzagged up to the front lines. 
Then B Company lay for twenty-four hours off 
duty in the dugouts, waiting to take its turn in 
the firing pits. They were all fit and ready, fed 
up and lusty, and with a feeling of joyous con- 
fidence in themselves. 

And the next night, just after dark, the squads 
stole on up to the dark first lines, relieving the 
tired watchers who passed them silently back 
to the dugouts. Then came an order that put 
Corporal May in a new and trying experience, 
even for his steady nerves. With his old bunky, 
Eddie Perkins, he had been sent up the deep, 
narrow underground passage to a listening post. 

For three hours, crouched in the narrow pit be- 
tween the boarded sides which dripped cease- 
lessly with cold and dirty water, Jimmy had 
waited. Now and then the raw wind whipped 
down the square little wooden aperture over his 
head between the limbs of the bit of brush which 
concealed the opening of the listening post. 
Looking up, Jimmy could see a faint star through 
the misty night; and now and then he arose, 
76 


UNDER THE TOP 


stepped on the second round of the short ladder 
and thrust his head up cautiously to the top of 
this wooden box. 

Twenty yards away he could just make out the 
dim blur of the wire defenses of the American 
front line, and beyond that his vivid imagina- 
tion pictured enemies crawling past their own 
entanglements for a raid on the Sammies 
trenches. For three minutes he listened and 
heard nothing save the rustle of the wind in the 
branches of the camouflage and the beating of his 
own heart. Then Jimmy crawled back to sit on 
the heels of his high trench boots in the sticky, 
miry clay at the end of the post. 

He looked back trying to see Private Perkins 
who sat on the edge of a piece of plank three 
paces rear. 

“Another hour of this,” whispered Jimmy, 
“and then — relief. This is a quiet sector, eh? 
That’s what’s the matter with it — it’s maddening. 
Listen! Is that our sappers, now, or the Ger- 
mans?” 

They could hear along the board wall to the 
left, a faint tapping, muffled, indistinguishable; 
77 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


at times wholly lost, though that was the worst 
moment of all, for the watchers in the listening 
post felt that then, at any moment, might come 
that most dreaded of all things to the trench 
fighters, the explosion of a mine under their feet, 
to the right, left — anywhere, to blow them to 
fragments or bury them under masses of smok- 
ing earth. 

Two days ago the listening post, established 
more to keep guard against assault over the top 
and through the wires, had heard the under- 
ground workers. At the first detection of it the 
engineers attached to the battalion, working in 
conjunction with experienced French officers, 
had started a tunnel to countermine the Bodies’ 
project. That was all that could be done, and 
the worst of it was that the enemy had started 
first, and it was all guesswork as to where he was 
coming. They had heard the picks and boring 
tools, but the exact location of these sounds eight 
feet or maybe more under the ground was diffi- 
cult. Fifteen yards back from the listening post 
the engineers had dug in at right angles to the 
trench and then pushed forward and deeper, for, 
78 


UNDER THE TOP 


as far as could be determined, the enemy sap was 
coming on the left. 

But Corporal Jimmy and Private Perkins up 
in the listening post knew almost nothing of this. 
The sound of their own sappers had grown 
fainter as they progressed further to the left. 
The two soldiers were out at the end of the lis- 
tening post thirty yards beyond the most ad- 
vanced firing trenches of their comrades, and here 
they must wait until the next relief came and 
they could go back to the cover trenches to rest 
over-strained nerves and get sleep and food. 

“Don’t know which relief’ll get it,” mumbled 
Perkins, “if the Fritzies blow off first. If they 
do, it’ll be when they think they’re under our 
main trenches, and whoever happens to be out 
here w T ill have a fine chance when the rush comes. 
They’ll be lookin’ for just such holes as we’re in.” 

“Sure — if they get by with it. I guess our 
buckies will have something to say about that rush 
— even a mine isn’t going to get all of ’em, 
Perky. And our engineers will have something 
to say, too — first.” 

“Mebbe,” grumbled the doubter. “What’s that 

79 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


Kipling poem you was spoutin’ just before we 
started out here ?” 

“But once in awhile , we can finish in style , 
Which 1 ’ ope it don't ' appen to me!” 

quoted Jimmy softly. He leaned back with his 
ear against the wall. 

“I get ’em again — off to the left, and forward. 
But the engineers say you can’t tell nothing about 
it — except it’s there.” 

He stood up and stretched himself in the deep, 
narrow pit. It was black as tar in there. The 
only good thing was that it was warmer than back 
in the firing trenches where the advanced squads 
lay at the lookouts, or back in the communicat- 
ing trenches, or even in the cover pits where the 
men not on immediate duty dozed in blankets 
and ponchos. Warmer, but always the listeners 
and the first-line men were under that terrible 
strain of knowing that along this bit of the sector 
a German sap was advancing. If it was not 
countermined by our engineers it meant swift 
death for some group of the Sammies. The sol- 
diers in the “T” trenches, the little isolated pits 
occupied each by a squad, and cut off from the 
80 


UNDER THE TOP 

adjoining units by thick walls of earth to lessen 
the destruction of just such operations, or the 
chance landing of a shell in any one trench, had 
got word of the sap coming from the invisible 
and silent enemy — and it got on their nerves. 
They had been under the first shell fire, and had 
heard the ceaseless whining of the German snip- 
ers’ bullets over their heads spattering into the 
muddy back walls and grazing on over the whole 
trench system behind, and after a week were tol- 
erably used to this. But to sit in dark and si- 
lence, knowing that at any moment, at any spot 
they might be blown clean out of the earth — that 
was something which the alert, nervous Amer- 
icans found harder than any assault. They would 
have welcomed an order to go “over the top” and 
at the Boches, artillery support or not. But noth- 
ing like that was started as yet for the green 
Sammies. Beyond the continual but desultory 
indirect fire of the guns back of them pounding 
away somewhere on the German communica- 
tions, there was no sign of an advance on the 
enemy. They knew they would not go over the 
top until the guns had smashed up the near 
trenches and the wire defenses, and Black Jack 
81 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


Pershing apparently was not ready for that yet. 

Private Perkins got up and flapped his arms 
about, following his noncom’s example. 

“War,” commented the fat soldier, “is the most 
lonesome job there is. I’d rather be back in 
Mexico where we could yell a bit. Here, every- 
thing we do is done in the dark. Sit down in the 
mud and keep your trap closed. Remember the 
sludgy, rainy old night we left the billet and 
hiked forward in heavy kit? We all felt fit as 
razors and thought there would be something 
doing at last. And on we splashed, and Tolliver 
he started our old chantey : 

“Ramble, ramble — ramble with a pack! 

Enough to break your back \ 

You ramble ’til the " 

“Dry up!” ordered Jimmy 

“That’s what they told Tolliver. No sing, no 
talk, no smoke — no nothing,” whispered Perky. 
“We marched forward in the dark one night into 
the reserve trenches, and the next night, in the 
dark, they put us up in the firing trenches. Then 
they make us crawl up here in the dark the next 
night. Between times we sit in the bottom of a 
82 


UNDER THE TOP 


seven-foot ditch and look up at the sky. I tried 
to look over the top once and the sergeant he 
jerks my collar until my teeth is loose. I sit 
down in the mud and along comes a couple of 
them engineers and drops a load of two-by-four 
scantling on me toes. I gets up like a gentleman 
to let ’em pass, and somebody yells ‘sit down!’ 
and heaves a can of biscuit at me. A fat gent 
like me is always in the way, so I sits down and 
waits ’til it’s dark again.” 

“Sit down!” growled Jimmy, “you’re rocking 
the trench!” 

Private Perkins eased the web brace of his 
pack, and sat down. 

He sighed. “There it goes again — sit down!” 

Corporal Jimmy looked at the luminous dial 
of his watch. Half past one, and they had half 
an hour more until relief. Again he made his 
periodical inspection of the front through the 
listening post aperture. The Sammies didn’t* 
really expect any attack in force these nights, but 
they felt that the seasoned German veterans over 
the way might indulge in patrol raids just to try 
the morale of the new foes from overseas. Not a 
bucky in Jimmy’s whole regiment had even seen 
83 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


a Boche as yet, and they thought it impolite to be 
introduced by an underhand, underground mine. 
If the Germans had thought over the whole 
scheme of modern war for a method to try the 
nerves of inexperienced men they couldn’t have 
hit on a better way than this stealthy, slow, un- 
certain menace of a mine coming forward to the 
trenches. 

The two listeners sat in silence and the dark 
again. It was Perky’s turn at the wooden box 
now, and he crawled over Jimmy’s legs to the 
end of the passage. While he was standing up 
to the ladder there came the low buzzing of the 
telephone a few yards back in the trench. Jimmy 
slipped quickly back and picked up the receiver. 
B Company’s senior captain spoke briefly from 
the officers’ post hewn deeply into the rock back 
in the communicating trench system. Headquar- 
ters, which was the brain and nerve center of all 
the labyrinth occupied by the platoons and 
squads, must be safe from any chance shell just 
as were the magazine rooms and the dressing 
stations. 

“Corporal May?” 


84 


UNDER THE TOP 


“Yes, sir,” responded Jimmy alertly. “All 
quiet, sir.” 

“The second relief will be advanced fifteen min- 
utes. You will, therefore, leave the man with 
you in charge of the post and report at once to 
Lieutenant Sage of the Engineers in the sap run- 
ning from your tunnel. Hold yourself for duty 
as he directs, sir.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

That was all. Jimmy hung the receiver up 
in the dark. Then he went feeling his way for- 
ward to Private Perkins at the listening hole. 

“Stick it out here, Perky, until the relief. I’m 
going into the left tunnel for something or other. 
Now keep your eye and ear to this box, so that 
the next detail knows what a guy you are for 
work. And when you get back to cover hunt a 
dry pair of socks out of my stuff and have ’em 
for me. It’ll be wet down there.” 

“Right-o. And if anything blows up mean- 
time, and me here ” 

“We’ll take care of your remains, bucky.” 

“Ree-mains? I’ll look out for my remains. If 
the Fritzies rush this old cave, I’ll be two jumps 
85 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 

ahead of ’em and carry my own remains along 
with me. So long, Corporal.” 

And Jimmy backed away with a laugh. He 
liked Perkins immensely. It was hard to get 
nervous and depressed with this comical and cor- 
pulent comrade, who, with all his apparent shift- 
lessness and indifference, was as brave and re- 
liable as they come. The worst thing about 
Perky was that he did not always see the neces- 
sity of the iron discipline and order of the new 
warfare. 

Corporal May went back through the dark. 
When he came to the intersection of the sap run- 
ning off at right angles to the tunnel which led to 
the listening post he saw a dim incandescent light 
and heard the low noise of the air pump which 
enabled the workers to burrow blindly into the 
earth. The engineering officers, to his surprise, 
were just passing into a new hole that led to the 
right of the tunnel. Lieutenant Sage turned to 
Corporal May as Jimmy saluted and reported 
for duty. 

“The left sap has been abandoned as the de- 
tectors seem to indicate that the enemy work is 
coming to the right hand. We are driving in 
86 


UNDER THE TOP 


there, but we wish to keep watch in the old tun- 
nel: Captain B anion says you are a good man 
for the job.” 

“I’ll do my best, sir.” 

“Take it for an hour, and we will then send 
relief. Our men have heard nothing there for 
more than a day. The sap struck some bad rock 
ledges, and can’t be pushed very rapidly, and 
besides there is reason to think that the Germans 
are boring on the right. Perhaps they are hitting 
forward on each side — that’s why you are needed 
to listen for any resumption of work on that side. 
If you catch any sound at all report to me at 
once.” 

“Yes, sir. Do my best, sir.” 

The lieutenant turned and went into the new 
right-hand bore. Jimmy could see the dim lights 
beyond the rough, narrow walls of clay. Under 
foot, along the single plank track upon which 
the excavated earth was laboriously hauled, were 
the air hose and the insulated lighting wires, but 
he could not see the workers, for the sap did not 
run straight but was driven with all speed through 
the easiest going in the general desired direction 
to intercept the enemy’s work. But the Corporal 
87 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


turned to the left Into the abandoned sap. It was 
not a pleasing detail. There were no lights at 
all until he turned on the pocket flash which the 
officer had provided. It just lit up the rough nar- 
row way, the boulders projecting through the red 
earth, and Jimmy crawled and stumbled on and 
down, conscious that the air was not at all good, 
and he would be lucky if he could stick his hour. 
It was part of his off-duty time, also, but he did 
not grumble. Some eighty feet away he came 
to the end of the working. A drift of dirty sand 
and huge fragments of limestone barred the way. 
The sappers had skirted around the rock in one 
place, leaving a narrow cleft, and then had been 
ordered out. Jimmy was to spend a lonesome 
hour lying along this slit to discover what he 
might with an unaided ear. He heard nothing 
save the vague sounds of his own party working 
off to the right and he studied to recognize 
these faint indications so that he might distin* 
guish any new sound of boring ahead of him. 

He shut off his flashlight and lay down in the 
cleft along the great buried boulder. 

“The air’s mighty bad, that’s a fact. Those 
88 


UNDER THE TOP 


fellows expect one to put up with anything when 
a man is on duty alone!” 

Under him in the chunky sand he discovered a 
narrow boring shovel, and sitting up he jabbed 
the steel into the wall ahead to make more room 
for his shoulders so that he could crawl clear to 
the end of the hole. The closer he got to the solid 
earth the better he might catch any faint sound 
beyond. 

“Nothing doing,” he muttered, after ten min- 
utes of listening. “If the Boches are on this side, 
they’re too far to detect. Anyhow, it’s not so 
hard on the nerves as hearing something , and not 
knowing where or what.” 

So he crawled and kicked into the loose sand 
around the rock. Then he lay still again to rest 
and fume against the close air of the sap. He 
would stay a few minutes and then crawl back 
to where there was more room and oxygen, and 
come in again when he felt better. 

After a few minutes Jimmy was slowly aware 
that he did feel better ! He raised his head from 
his arm and sniff ed. Then he drew a long breath. 
A flicker of newer air seemed before his nose. 
He studied this phenomenon awhile, and then 
89 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


stretched himself out and dug his way closer 
along the bowlder into the cleft. 

The air was fresher! It was coming from 
somewhere ahead, too! He stared into the pitch 
dark, trying to realize that fact. Then he shot 
his flashlight on. He saw nothing but the bulge 
of the rock and the side of sandy clay. But he 
heaved forward into this narrowing cleft, and dug 
with hands and elbows. Now he knew there was 
air coming from some subterranean passage. 
Perhaps it was a natural cavern beyond the rock ; 
perhaps it was — it couldn’t be possible that the 
engineers had abandoned the sap just before it 
opened on the German tunnel ! They would have 
detected the enemy workers long before that. 

But he determined to see. He lay quiet for a 
time and his stirring imagination began to pick 
up sounds — gnomes of the hill caverns of France, 
or crafty, scientific invaders of her soil — what- 
ever it was, it was something. Jimmy wormed 
his way on, wallowing the sand back of his knees. 
Chunks of it fell on his shoulders ; he pushed this 
back too, conscious that he need not fear for 
air. It was coming gently past the tiny crevice 
of the rock. The sounds seemed to be a gentle 
90 


UNDER THE TOP 

purring and not drills or picks. Jimmy thought 
he ought to be sure ere he hastened back to re- 
port to the engineers. He dug another two feet 
around the bulge of rock, and was reaching ahead 
to fork the dirt back under his breast, when he 
found he was scratching some new substance. It 
was not rock, or sandy clay. His finger tips dug 
along it. Then carefully he drew his flashlight 
on past his chin and turned it on. The blur of 
light in the crevice lit up wood! New, rough 
planking ! 

Jimmy relaxed his tense body, so surprised 
that he nearly whistled. On the silence now came 
that purr again. 

“There’s an air exhaust going somewhere! 
But not near me!” He studied it over. Then he 
determined to explore, and shutting off the light 
he burrowed busily for some minutes, enlarging 
his hole and drawing his head and shoulders 
nearer the boarding. And to his surprise the sand 
began to pack down loosely under his elbows. 
Then he guessed the puzzle. The Boches had 
driven past this sandy spot and had been com- 
pelled to bulkhead it up. 

“Passed it!” muttered Jimmy. “That is why 
91 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 

we couldn’t hear ’em when the fellows were so 
close ! They’ve got so far past that they are clean 
up under our firing trenches and sapping either 
way for their mines. We couldn’t hear ’em be- 
cause they are working so cautiously now, dig- 
ging out bit by bit and carrying the earth back! 
I’m just alongside their tunnel running to the 
working-head!” 

He must get back now and report this im- 
minent danger. Even now the Germans might 
have laid their explosives under the American 
trenches and be prepared to retreat to their own 
lines and touch the spark that would hurl his 
comrades to death. Then they would dash for- 
ward over No Man’s Land and seize the crater 
and as much of the other trench system as they 
could against the demoralized defenders. The 
artillery would concentrate for a barrage upon 
the American communications to prevent aid 
coming to the assaulted section. Or perhaps the 
Germans were out of this sap with everything 
ready, and were waiting for another tunnel to be 
completed over to the right where the American 
engineers were now boring their countermine. 
This must be so, for the suspicious sounds now 
92 


UNDER THE TOP 

seemed to be on that side. But the counterwork 
was too late in that case. If the Germans sus- 
pected that their plans were known they would 
blow up the mines already laid and attack in- 
stantly. 

“Got to beat it quick,” thought Jimmy, and he 
tried to squirm back from the enemy’s barricades. 
But this was not easy. His big boots scuffed 
against the rock and in the sand. He deter- 
mined to crouch around against the boards and 
go out headfirst. There was a space now along 
the bulkhead. In fact Jimmy discovered that he 
could almost look above it into the German tun- 
nel. The sand behind it had been loosely shov- 
eled in along the rock from their side. 

Jimmy was scratching around cautiously when 
a gleam of light showed through a half-inch crack 
where he packed the sand under him. He put an 
eye to this and looked. The light was some dis- 
tance down the rough tunnel. He could hear the 
air pump faintly throbbing. The electric light 
wires and the air connections must run right 
along at the foot of the bulkhead just as it would 
be in the Americans’ tunnel. But Corporal May 
was not intent on further scouting. He had to 
93 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


report and quick before something happened. 
Then his ear caught a new sound. Some one 
was coming along the passage. He lay out 
limply in the sand, his eye to the crack of the 
boards. First grotesque shadows flickered along 
the opposite wall. Then figures shambled along. 
He saw the dirty gray of the German sappers, 
not one, but a dozen, with picks and tools. Gut- 
tural talk and whispers came, and then the gruff 
command of some officer cautioning silence. 

Jimmy hardly breathed. It was his first sight 
of the enemy, and were the crack wide enough he 
could have touched their clothes! 

He dared not -move now. Discovery would 
mean not only his capture, but a terrible disas- 
ter to his whole battalion, perhaps. The file of 
workers passed, and after waiting a bit Jimmy 
started to turn for his slow crawl back. Then 
he heard another noise — in his own tunnel, this 
time, back around the bulge of the great bowl- 
der. The relief had come; some fool N. C. O., 
or perhaps one of the Engineering officers, had 
led the way into the abandoned sap to inquire 
what Jimmy had discovered. Voices were raised 
— they were surprised that the lone sentry had 
94 « 


UNDER THE TOP 


disappeared. Jimmy started again to worm out 
along the boarding when he heard more voices 
nearer. On the German side this time I 

And he stopped in a sudden panic. The 
Bodies must not hear the Sammies poking about, 
asking for Jimmy May’s whereabouts. He must 
obstruct that narrow cleft through which he had 
crawled, and the only way was to hump his own 
back against it and lay with his knees doubled 
up pushing against the boarding. Again he saw 
shadows passing the crack of light. The Ger- 
mans stopped for some purpose; he heard one 
mutter something, and another laugh. They 
struck a match and the low talk went on. A mass 
of sandy clay fell from the stuff above and thud- 
ded on Jimmy’s head and shoulders. He moved 
to get his face above it, wondering if it was aud- 
ible in the tunnel. 

And then it seemed as if the bulkhead was 
pressing inward with his added weight. It was 
only a light, temporary boarding to hold back 
the sand, and the stakes were not driven deeply. 

“She’s caving in!” gasped Jimmy, “sure as 
shootin’! Oh, won’t those fellows move on? I’ll 
be dumped right out at their feet!” 

95 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 

He had pressed his back desperately into the 
hole toward the American sap to check their 
voices, but this was what had started the flimsy 
boarding to give way. He heard dirt rattle down 
beneath him, and then the slow breaking of some 
splinters. And still the Germans in the tunnel 
gabbled on maddeningly. If they suspected the 
spot, a single bayonet thrust through the cracks 
would end Corporal May’s career in France. 
And then the mines would blot out half the bat- 
talion in the first-line trenches. 

Jimmy lay grimly tense thinking of it all. He 
couldn’t do a thing, he hardly dared gasp for 
breath in the slowly dropping earth on his face. 
But presently he heard the Boches shamble on, 
arguing in low tones, going to the head of the 
sap. And before they had gone out of sound, 
Jimmy felt the bottom boards give out with a 
smash of loose dirt. He sank above this, his head 
struck another board which pulled from the light 
nails, and then he was fighting in a slow slide of 
sand. He couldn’t get back up, and the next 
minute he found himself rolled out fair in the 
German tunnel with the caving earth following. 

He sat up and stared. There were a few dim 
96 


UNDER THE TOP 


lights in either direction. But no one was in 
sight. A few earth baskets and sacks were scat- 
tered along the narrow tunnel. If there was any 
work going on up ahead it must be around the 
corners where the mines would be projected un- 
der the American trenches. 

Jimmy scrambled to his feet. “I can’t stay 
here!” he muttered. “First man along will dis- 
cover this cave-in now! I got to tear down that 
bulkhead more and fight back through the sand ! 
Quick, too!” 

He jerked aside another board and scrambled 
into the sand seeking his exit. It had widened 
considerably now until he reached the clay around 
the big rock, and here Jimmy was drawing his 
body through when he heard a low yell ahead. 
A dazzling light was flung in his eyes. 

“Be still!” he gasped. “Cut out that noise! 
I’m in their tunnel!” 

Then he saw he had been using highly unmili- 
tary language to Lieutenant Sage of the Engi- 
neers, who knelt in the excavated portion of the 
sap, staring at Corporal May’s head and shoul- 
ders. 


97 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


“Struck it?” said the officer, quietly. “Sure, 
sir?” 

“I fell into it, sir! And they’ll discover I did, 
in a minute! They’re clear up under our lines, 
sir! Wires laid along the sap, sir! If they dis- 
cover that we know ” 

The officer turned hastily, speaking back to 
men behind him. Then he crouched down to 
Jimmy’s ear. 

“Too late to countermine, then. Let a bomb- 
ing squad through and clear ’em out.” 

“Yes, but the wires, sir. They can blow the 
thing, sir, any time!” 

“Cut those wires. Here’s clippers, sir. De- 
stroy every wire in the tunnel. We’ll be through 
after you.” Then he turned again: “Get those 
shovel men busy on this — and send for Lieuten^ 
ant Miller’s bombing party. Quick work there !” 

Jimmy tore and smashed at the wiring. The 
instant resourcefulness of the officer communi- 
cated at once to his alert mind. He had to cut 
those wires ! Then they would fight it out in the 
tunnel. 

Back he wormed and crawled. Down the four- 
foot slide of sand, and rolling under the broken 
98 


A dazzling light was flung in his eyes. 




. 




















. 

. 








- 




•• 









• ' 















































‘ 



















UNDER THE TOP 


bulkhead to the tunnel bed. Then along the 
dimly-lighted chamber to where the wiring clung 
to the foot of the wall. Half a dozen insulations 
were there, and first Jimmy gave a swift glance 
around to be sure they were all. Then he grabbed 
the bundle, hoping desperately there were no 
unprotected currents, and slashed into them with 
his heavy cutters. And the third wire he snipped 
plunged the tunnel into pitch darkness. The 
thing would be discovered now when the Ger- 
mans came hurrying to find wdiat was wrong 
with the tunnel lights. 

Jimmy tore and smashed at the wiring. Afraid 
of the loose ends, he dashed back a yard or so 
and cut and jerked until he knew every com- 
munication was destroyed from the German 
trenches to the mine head. 

Then two things broke on his fretting senses 
at the same instant. One was a bewildered 
shout somewhere ahead. And the other was the 
sound of struggling bodies in the crumbling en- 
try from the American sap. In pitch darkness 
the eager Sammies were pouring through. Some- 
body pitched into him, and spoke, and Jimmy 
knew it was his own beloved Senior Captain. 

99 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


He grasped Captain Banion’s sleeve. “There’s 
a light coming up at the head, sir — a flashlight, I 
guess. But the wires are cut, sir!” 

“Take both w r ays, you men!” shouted the of- 
ficer. “Go clean on until you let ’em have it. 
They’re all trapped up forward!” 

And the next instant the deafening explosion 
of a bomb came back towards the German lines. 
The charging Sammies along the narrow pit had 
encountered some work party hurrying forward. 
A ragged, eager yell went up — and then another 
bomb, and after that the air was thick with acrid 
fumes. But nothing more was needed. The 
Boches fled from the tunnel, and the Americans 
threw up a barricade across the passage. 

Up the other end the ceremonies were short. 
Two rifle shots were fired around the corner of 
the sap angle, a peremptory command or two 
were given ; and ten minutes later a helpless Ger- 
man engineer surrendered with twenty-six aston- 
ished workers, one of whom had got a bullet 
through the thigh, and that was all the casual- 
ties. 

When Lieutenant Sage of the Engineers came 
back from a survey of the deadly explosives laid 
100 


UNDER THE TOP 


at the sap head he discovered Captain Barren of 
the Infantry checking off the dirty-garbed pris- 
oners as they filed into the American tunnel. 
When the last was through, the two officers dis- 
covered Corporal Jimmy May being dusted off 
hastily by Private Perkins who seemed speech- 
less with regret and amazement. He grumbled 
enviously : 

“First man to get at ’em, eh? Might have 
knowed it! Next time I’m goin’ to hang right 
onto your shirt-tail when you go anywhere!” 


CHAPTER V 


CLOSE WOEK 



THOUSAND feet above the far-flung bat- 


tie line in Eastern France Corporal Jimmy 
May stood idly against the steel lattice basket 
of the observation balloon and amused himself by 
sending joshing messages down to where he 
knew B Company, and especially Eddie Perkins 
in the communicating and rest trenches, would be 
watching, for they knew that Jimmy had gone 
out this afternoon with an officer of the Signal 
Corps for training in the two-arm semaphore 
code. Not that Corporal May needed any added 
proficiency in handling the flags or sending code, 
for he was an expert in this long before he crossed 
the water, but getting it over from the swaying 
gas bag and in the cramped space of the under- 
hanging basket was another thing. And the 
higher command had decided that certain intel- 
ligent and nervy N. C. O.’s of the line should 
work along with the regular Signal Corps men 


102 


CLOSE WORK 


just to have them ready for use. Every unit of 
the Army must contain men who could be called 
in emergencies to any sort of job. 

Jimmy had been up three times on observation 
with Lieutenant Cook. The dizzy altitude and 
the movement of the basket at the end of the 
long cable no longer bothered him ; and even when 
from the distant German lines there came bursts 
of shrapnel showering down in the American 
trenches below him Jimmy had only watched it 
with professional interest. In the “quiet sector” 
to which the training of the balloon service men 
had been assigned, the German trenches were 
some mile and a half from the American ad- 
vanced works, and the observers to-day were more 
intent on problems of meteorology and windage 
and the lay of the land than watching any pos- 
sible troop movement behind the enemy lines. So 
Corporal May had little to do beyond intently lis- 
tening to the instruction of the signal officer. 

“Call up the windlass men, Corporal, and have 
’em give us two thousand feet — we’ll be able to 
pick up some of their lines at that altitude, be- 
hind that little ridge to the left. Might as well 
103 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


put you onto a little scouting, and see what sort 
of report you can turn in.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

Jimmy turned alertly to the telephone that led 
down the slender wire cable to the windlass sta- 
tion which controlled the observation balloon. 
The sergeant below answered lazily, but pres- 
ently the observers knew that the big bag was 
swinging up and off in the breeze towards the 
distant No Man’s Land. 

A thousand feet more brought a wide radius 
into their vision. J ust below J immy could see the 
series of communication trenches of the Sam- 
mies, and the little “T” pits that sheltered the 
front-line squads. Far off to the rear a convoy 
crawled along under the shelter of a low, brown 
hill. Jimmy had learned his land well on the 
American side; he knew just where the next ob- 
servation balloon a mile down the line took up its 
section of the map, for he had traced the whole 
terrain laboriously yesterday, tree and ridge and 
creek and ruined hamlet. 

He ceased playing with the semaphore flags 
which were used only in emergencies in balloon 
signaling, and took up the powerful binoculars; 

104 


CLOSE WORK 


and, seated comfortably down where the keen 
wind of December was less cutting, he began a 
painstaking and methodical survey of the sector 
of the German territory that was assigned to this 
observation post. With the longer line at the 
two-thousand-foot altitude the cylindrical gas 
bag plunged and yawed, and now and then the 
observers discovered it was enveloped in patches 
of low flying cloud that rolled up from the 
west. 

“Going to ruin our visibility over there,” said 
Lieutenant Cook, with a gesture towards the 
German land. “As the sun swings lower, 
though, we can map out some preliminary work 
and then to-morrow you can compare it with 
a new map and see how well you stack up. Now 
what do you make off to the right behind their 
first salient — that bulge around the wooded 
ridge ? 

“Of course,” he said, a moment later, “there’s 
a nest of field batteries in there, but what’s going 
on behind — that’s what we have to check up, day 
by day. Any little change in the back lines, or 
any unusual activity on their field railroads — 
even a bunch of cars left longer than usual on 
105 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


a siding indicates something. Got to check it 
all up, Corporal, day to day, even hour to hour, 
so that our general staff can assemble all the 
data from all our observers and make a good 
guess just where and what the Boches may be 
at. Good job for a fresh air crank up here any- 
way, isn’t it?” 

“Little too much, sir!” Jimmy swung his 
heavy gloves together to restore some warmth 
to his fingers, smashed his leather cap tighter 
over his ears, and smiled back at this friendly 
officer of the O.B.C. who was taking his first 
training on French soil himself, and had not seen 
any of the rough, actual service that two years 
had brought the quiet, non-boastful Corporal 
back in America. 

Then he went to his aerial spying over beyond 
No Man’s Land. The horizons of the wintry 
brown earth were becoming misty and obscure, 
and when patches of cloud struck across the sun, 
Jimmy had hard work in identifying landmarks 
beyond the German positions that he had al- 
ready recorded. The first-line trenches were 
faint little markings visible, now and then, on 
a slope, and then lost altogether, while the corn- 
106 


CLOSE WORK 


munications leading back came out clearer. 
Over to the left, two miles away, a lively little 
shelling was going on from the American side, 
endeavoring to reach some concealed German 
batteries over a ridge, but this had become all 
in the day’s work of late, and Jimmy paid no 
attention to it as it lay entirely in the field of 
other balloon observers. Jimmy could make out 
four of the captive gas bags bobbing away be- 
hind the Sammies’ lines, and once he saw a white 
shrapnel burst near one of them as the enemy, 
annoyed at the close ranging in of the Ameri- 
can guns on their own batteries, took an occa- 
sional poke at the spotters in the air. 

So far the Germans had not bothered Jimmy’s 
balloon, as it had no part in the range-finding 
for the Yankee artillery. He and Lieutenant 
Cook were just keeping tab on a stretch where 
a German military railway could be watched five 
miles distant, and they had to discover and re- 
port any activity along this exposed place. The 
American guns had already hammered it a bit 
this week, and the Fritzies had grown cautious 
with their train schedule. 

“Bringing up their stuff in the night, I sup- 
107 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


pose,” commented Lieutenant Cook. “Hello, 
there’s a bunch of cars poking across that val- 
ley now, Corporal! Send that down, now — ' 
maybe the staff’ll want to show ’em that we’re 
not sound asleep on this sector. Say, Corporal, 
that is a real field train moving up !” 

Intently they both watched through their 
glasses. Jimmy could pick out the cut of the 
little military roadbed — a yellowish streak 
against the darker earth. On part of the way 
it had been camouflaged with tree branches and 
a sort of fencing, but the balloon observers had 
long since marked this down for the guns. 

“Needn’t bother about sending range,” con- 
tinued the officer; “all the data for that spot has 
been worked out, and the artillery has it down 
fine.” 

“Hello, there!” cried Jimmy over the wire, 
after he was once in connection with the head- 
quarters’ staff. “Balloon station No. 7, and 
Lieutenant Cook wishes to report that train 
movement is taking place behind enemy lines — 
the little valley, range and target for which is 
in your hands. He reports quick action, sir, will 
be necessary, if at all, while they’re in the open — ” 
108 


CLOSE WORK 


And all Corporal Jimmy got back was a sort 
of mutter which he took was the officer below 
turning to snap some order to another unit of 
the swiftly moving organization that would 
control the artillery fire. Indeed, it seemed he 
had hardly turned back to where his fellow ob- 
server was slanting his glasses out over the basket 
side, when off to his right and rear a bit, there 
came the muffled roar of a whole battery of 
the American “four-point sevens.” 

The salvo burst out and strung along like a 
pack of angry dogs, and Jimmy saw the gray 
smoke lift and spread from the concealed em- 
placement. It was all plain to him here, and 
then he turned to fling his glasses on the far, faint 
streak of the railroad cutting. Instantly he 
caught a burst of black smoke and dirt just this 
side of the target designation, and then another 
and another as the high explosive shells searched 
out their prey. 

“Short — a bit short!” yelled the signal officer, 
and he turned about to seize the telephone that 
now would be connected directly to the fire con- 
trol commander : “Looks like two hundred yards 
felevation would get ’em!” 

109 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


“Think so, sir! Just about! Zing! There’s 
one that lifted dust right about in their right-of- 
way! The boys are changing the elevation, sir — 
they’re gettin’ ’em!” 

The officer was about once more, eager to see 
the fun: “Flopped a big one right ahead of that 
train, Corporal! There — that’s the three-inch- 
ers, this time! They’re pumping everything in, 
aren’t they?” 

Lieutenant Cook, O. R. C., had never been 
under fire, or he would have noted the quizzical 
grin which Corporal May turned to him. Jimmy 
figured that in just about ten minutes the Huns 
would be so sore at the way the lively Sammies 
were mashing up their transport that there’d be 
some hullabaloo at this end of the line also. And 
the airmen not being active to-day, they would 
know it was the line of observers in the balloons 
who were spying out their movements. All over 
those low ridges and woody hills to the east and 
north the wily Boches were waiting to break up 
the constantly increasing offensive of the Sam- 
mies’ artillery. So far they had been playing at 
this gun work and a night trench raid now and 
then. 


110 


There came the muffled roar of a whole battery 
of the American “four-point sevens.” 



CLOSE WORK 


Jimmy turned quietly to his superior of the 
O. R. C., who was getting pleasantly excited over 
the battle they had started. “There they come, 
sir, poking a gun at us from that nest we marked 
down yesterday on Hill No. 26 . We better send 
that down, now, also.” 

So the officer “called down” the battery which 
had uncovered itself for a target, and presently 
another American battery spoke up far to the 
left and Jimmy had the satisfaction of seeing 
the enemy guns marked up by a black splotch of 
lifted earth. Then the German fieldpieces be- 
gan to bark closer in, and in a minute the two ob- 
servers, knowing that each side had one another 
pretty well spotted, had nothing to do but watch 
the long range racket. 

“Business picking up, Corporal May!” said 
the Lieutenant. “See ’em opening up clear down 
the line? Better than it was day before yester- 
day when they did mash up one of our gun sta- 
tions!” 

Jimmy’s eye was casually following the hazy 
flight of a shell which he could pick up as it lifted 
from the German concealment behind the wooded 
ridge. 


Ill 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


“Now,” he muttered, “what’s the game? They 
really must be trying to reach our base camp at 
that elevation!” 

For the five-inch shell described a beautiful 
arc over the American trenches, batteries and all, 
and exploded high in the air far to the rear. 

Jimmy turned and eyed his inexperienced su- 
perior officer. He wondered if Lieutenant Cook 
guessed that the Boches slammed that one over 
as a feeler for the balloon line two thousand feet 
above the ground target, the American guns, 
which they would ordinarily try to locate. 

“Sure as shootin’ fish in a bucket,” murmured 
Jimmy, “they’re going to sprinkle a little shrap- 
nel around this crazy old gas bag!” 

He watched the black smears where the Ger- 
man shells were falling back of the Sammies’ 
first lines, crowding in closer and closer to the 
gun locations. Then a sharp, jarring explosion 
came right ahead in mid-air ! 

Lieutenant Cook turned quickly and they 
both stared at the white, spreading cloud seem- 
ingly so deadly near to them. But not a sound 
of the spraying shrapnel reached their ears. 

“Sir, they’re chalking us up ! They timed that 
112 


CLOSE WORK 


one pretty near right, but altogether too low. 
Kind of bad business, sir!” 

Jimmy didn’t feel like suggesting that they 
signal to be lowered. Or the windlass men could 
give them another five hundred feet of cable. 
With all his nervy resourcefulness Corporal May 
of the Regulars was cautious enough when cau- 
tion was the thing. It was no manner of use to 
hang on up here now. The guns knew their 
range and targets, and the air up here was chilly 
anyway. 

“Maybe they’ll bang away r til dark,” growled 
Jimmy, “and ” 

He saw and heard the explosion of two shells 
almost below them and in the foreground — 
straight on the American front trenches. The 
reverberation of the artillery fusillade came from 
both sides now and far down the line, as if every 
one was getting tired of the inaction all day. 
Jimmy knew that he was getting a beautiful 
bird’s-eye view of a real artillery duel now, but 
he wasn’t going to let this O. R. C. lieutenant 
know it was his first. So he quietly watched the 
racket below and then off to the German target 
designations which now were getting hazy in 
113 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 

the dust and distance. But out of that thicken- 
ing area was coming the deadly scatter of shrap- 
nel and high explosive shells with which the irri- 
tated Boches were trying to quiet the watchful 
Sammies who had interfered with their transport 
road. 

Again and again Jimmy saw the jets of black 
dirt rise among the American trenches, and he 
grew quite sorry for the fellows who must be 
hunting holes down there from the bombard- 
ment. And then came a sensation as if a cur- 
rent of air had billowed up to tug heavily on the 
basket, and the balloon went dodging off side- 
ways under the impact. 

“My-O!” yelled Jimmy, trying to steady him- 
self against this maddening spin, “that was a 
good one, sir! Good thing that it was under us 
instead of above or we’d have been picking shrap- 
nel out of our hides for a month — not forgetting 
a first-class tumble down to home folks!” 

He looked down at the dizzy space to the ir- 
regular lines of trenches. Tiny figures showed 
here and there, and Jimmy imagined that they 
were staring up to see what had happened to the 
aeronauts. He saw the squad of Signal Corps 
114 


CLOSE WORK 


men around the windlass station suddenly stare 
off over the trenches and then, as he tried to fix 
the glasses more clearly on them, they suddenly 
broke and ran in all directions. 

The next instant the whole bit of ground 
around the machinery was blotted out by a jet 
of brown earth. 

“A hit!” gasped Jimmy, “square as could be!” 

“Yes,” retorted the Lieutenant, “and the tele- 
phone’s gone.” 

He threw down the useless headgear, and 
turned to Corporal May, who had suddenly 
jumped to the basket’s side and looked down 
again. The big cylindrical bag had made a slow 
heave off in the tugging wind. Jimmy took one 
long glance and then turned quietly to his su- 
perior. 

“So is everything else, sir! The balloon is 
loose, runing amuck, and we’re going skyward 
about as fast as we can!” 

The Lieutenant stared. They saw the long 
cable sway and drag out of the dust cloud behind 
the trenches. It was flying on over the com- 
munication lines, on and on to the firing front — 
115 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


then on out over No Man’s Land — straight for 
the German works ! 

A single high-angle, indirect shot had blown 
the anchorage free, and they both knew what it 
meant. The Lieutenant reached for the escape 
valve which would keep the balloon from rising 
too high and fast. But Corporal May instantly 
knew that was useless. They would be over the 
German lines or at least in deadly rifle range 
long ere they could bring the bag near the 
ground. 

“Won’t do, sir! The parachutes — got to use 
’em, and quick!” 

“That’s so!” The officer crouched about star- 
ing at Jimmy. “Did you ever use those con- 
trivances, Corporal? I didn’t!” 

“No, sir. But they are here, one on either side, 
and ready to use. We had practice in cutting 
’em loose this week, but a two-thousand-foot 
jump — Oh, Glory — no!” 

“The higher, the safer!” Lieutenant Cook 
was rapidly working at the lashings which held 
the carefully arranged parachute to the basket 
guys. The observers knew that the strong, 
silken contrivances were inspected at every as- 
116 


CLOSE WORK 


cent and there was hardly a chance of failure. 
But for inexperienced men it was a nerve-testing 
dilemma. 

“Hurry, sir,” shouted Jimmy; “seems like 
were traveling seventy miles an hour on this 
wind! Swing out in your seat and I’ll handle 
your lines! You’ll make it just outside our 
barbed wires, I think, but cut loose, quick!” 

The officer swung out and dropped in the 
ringed seat of the parachute, but he turned a pale, 
doubtful face to his comrade. “All right — but 
follow me at once, Corporal, and careful with 
your start.” 

And then, plunging like a dead weight for the 
distant earth, Jimmy saw the parachute go free. 
So intent was he in some desperate fear that it 
would not open that he did not realize that the 
balloon shot on upward swiftly under the release 
of the officer’s weight. Then Jimmy saw the 
parachute slowly unfold and then snap out, look- 
ing to him above like a yellow pumpkin fixed in 
mid-air. 

Then Corporal May turned swiftly to unloose 
his own parachute from its bindings. It was only 
the work of seconds, but he started in dismay 
117 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


when he saw that he was drifting now far to the 
east towards a distant line of hills, and that a 
scud of mist hid the earth directly beneath him. 
Over the enemy lines it lay like a white blanket 
thinning here and there, but not allowing him to 
distinguish any familiar object. The rolling re- 
verberations of the artillery battle came up clear 
and menacing, but so confusing that for a mo- 
ment Jimmy lost his sense of location. 

He discovered himself staring wildly at his 
own lines thinking they were the Germans’. 
Everything looked unfamiliar in the distorting 
fog. Something had whipped into the parachute 
lashings and he tore off his glove and worked 
desperately in the bitter cold, muttering to him- 
self. 

“Got to be out of this!” Then he stopped and 
stared again. The grim, hard fact faced him that 
he was surely going to end his military career 
in a German prison camp. He thought of Rob- 
bie McClane, the Canadian corporal, to whose 
father he had smilingly promised he would look 
for his son some day in Germany. That was a 
fine joke now ! And for once Jimmy’s alert pres- 
ence of mind deserted him. He couldn’t decide 
118 


CLOSE WORK 


whether to jump and take a chance down in that 
uncertain mist bank or wait a few minutes and 
see where he was traveling. Beyond the Amer- 
ican sector began the lines of the French allies, 
and perhaps if he was bearing easterly he might 
descend into them. 

“Then I might not, too!” muttered Jimmy. 
He sat back on his heels grasping the parachute 
lashings and stared out. He knew from the easy 
motion of the balloon that it was traveling fast 
and steadily on with the wind. It was much 
pleasanter than riding on the anchor as far as a 
joy ride was concerned — but it was that finish, 
reflected Jimmy, that might not be so lovely. 

Through the thin, reeling mists he saw darker 
patches that must be woods, then the contour 
of an unfamiliar hill, and then a silvery twist that 
must be water. 

“River!” gasped Jimmy. “Now that’s news 
to me! Must be streaking it for Lorraine, or’ 
straight on to Berlin itself!” 

He tried to remember just how long the ob- 
servation balloon would keep its buoyancy; he 
felt that with the threatening weather it would 
be perilous to remain aloft under any circum- 
119 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


stances, and with night coming on he would have 
to jump soon anyway. 

“Take a chance, man!” he muttered; “one 
time’s as bad as another.” 

So with another anxious survey of the round, 
foggy aspect of the earth, he made the last stays 
loose on the parachute, took one careful look at 
the creaking guys above the basket and climbed 
over to settle in the canvas-bottomed ring. And 
once outside the basket Jimmy was fairly scared. 
It struck him how he was hanging a half mile 
above the ground trusting to that flimsy arrange- 
ment of cord and cloth. His fingers were numb- 
ing and he didn’t dare think of the chances any 
longer. So he settled back, freed the check cord, 
and then felt his breath suddenly leave him. 

He had gone like a rocket before he was ready, 
it seemed. The air rushed up terrifically, tearing 
at his clothes as he hung to the stays. The para- 
chute was a streak of dark above him and Jimmy 
felt despairingly that it never would open. Then 
it fluttered out one side, spun a moment and with 
a snap like a great whip the umbrella top flew 
wide. 

Jimmy felt his wild plunge check slowly, then 
120 


CLOSE WORK 


he dived off on the gale, swung back and began 
to drop steadily through the curtain of fog. He 
swTing his forehead against his arm, for he felt 
he was actually perspiring — Corporal Jimmy of 
the Regulars was scared badly — scared worse 
than he ever had been. He would have given 
everything he possessed to be back on good solid 
ground. 

Watching past his seat he saw the outlines of 
the earth grow plainer, and then he went into a 
thick, drifting cloud. And when he came out 
of this he started with dismay to discover the 
ground so close, rising up like a brown, wavering 
blanket to meet him. He saw faint tree tops, 
and then the branches — woods everywhere in the 
damp mist. And another moment he was whirl- 
ing down straight on them. He drew up his legs, 
shrinking from the impact, for he imagined he 
was dropping much faster than he really was. 
Almost before he had time to dodge, he saw a 
gaunt tree top heave up past him, and then the 
edge of the parachute cracked into another 
branch, broke through, flopping Jimmy wildly 
into some evergreen limbs, broke again, and let 
him go with a hard crash into more yielding 
121 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 

branches. He covered his face with one hand and 
grasped at the evergreen foliage. Then he rolled 
over and discovered himself on his stomach, star- 
ing down at real, leafy earth twenty feet below. 

He got his wind presently, but he didn’t move, 
so startling was this change from the white world 
above. Then he heaved a sigh of thankfulness. 
He was down anyhow to whatever adventure be- 
fell him. 

But for some moments Jimmy tiredly didn’t 
want to move. The sting of hitting into this mass 
of evergreen seemed to have warmed him, and 
besides he wanted to think. If he only knew how 
far he had drifted, and where the lines were! 
Finally he got his pocket compass out and rough- 
ly computed that he must have gone fifteen miles 
and in an easterly trend along the front of the 
opposing armies. The artillery was growling 
away slowly in the dusk, and Corporal May de- 
cided to move. He swung down the limbs stiffly, 
straddled to the ground, looked about in the fog 
and then discovered something that made him 
tense with watchfulness. A rough stick ladder 
led up another tree not ten yards away and in this 
tree top was a lookout post. But what got Jim- 
122 


CLOSE WORK 


my’s gaze was a little limb and canvas shelter 
hut at the foot of the tree and under that was a 
figure huddled in a blanket. A big pair of Ger- 
man hobnailed boots protruded, and a good-sized 
German snore arose on the silence. 

“Well,” muttered Corporal May, “no doubt of 
where I am anyhow!” 

Slowly, alertly, he crept to the hut. The fel- 
low lay in some dirty straw, a young, stupid- 
appearing, peasant boy whose little round cap 
with the designation mark of a Bavarian corps 
lay by his hand. A telephone box was against 
the tree and on it hung a courier’s leather sack. 
The fellow was apparently off duty but waiting 
for some one. The tree top observation post was 
of no use in this weather at all. But Jimmy de- 
cided that he could use the German boy’s cap. 
He had to run their lines somehow or go over 
the Rhine a prisoner, and a Bavarian headpiece 
might help. So he drew the cap away, tucked 
his own under his shirt, and then he unslung the 
courier’s sack and hung it over his shoulder. 

“Camouflage, for sure,” breathed Jimmy, “and 
just to delay any alarm, we’ll break that tele- 
phone connection.” 


128 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


After that Corporal May backed cautiously 
off and walked briskly down a road that en- 
tered a silent, fog-filled, little valley. The com- 
pass bearings took him southeast and the road 
led that way also. He made up his mind he 
would walk boldly on until he found reason for 
caution. He might make any patrol encoun- 
tered think he was on business. And sure enough 
within five hundred yards he made out a log hut 
off the roadside with dim figures of men by a 
smoky little fire. 

Taking a good, important stride, Jimmy went 
straight on along the road. He heard their voices, 
and saw one who appeared to be on sentry duty, 
but this fellow merely watched the courier pass 
until the fog swallowed him up. Then Jimmy 
May let out a breath of relief. 

“Close work!” He trudged on, keeping a 
wary eye out to the roadside. And presently he 
was sure this little valley opened out to a wider 
space. He found great shell-holes in the road 
and shattered trees, and then a dead horse. Se- 
lecting a good shell-hole, Jimmy sat down to do 
a little reasoning in military engineering. 

“This road descends a slope that is under di- 
124 


CLOSE WORK 


rect fire, that’s plain. And so the Germans didn’t 
run their first-line trenches across it. They could 
defend it with machine gun redoubts from each 
slope on the sides much easier. They just let the 
French bang away at the road, but no infantry 
attack could reach it. Plain as day! Well, then 
I’ll stick to the road and sneak if they happen to 
have a patrol out.” 

So silently, waching in the fog, he crept from 
shell-hole to shell-hole. He struck boggy ground. 
The frowning hills on each side the pass in the 
rear disappeared in the fog. He felt sure he was 
past the first line of defenses. And he had heard 
that this sector was but thinly held just now. 
But there ought to be a sentry out on the road 
at least. And half a mile out on the boggy flat 
Jimmy suddenly squatted down in a shell-hole, 
silent as the clods. 

There was the road outpost! He came saun- 
tering along through the mud and passed Cor- 
poral May who lay flat on his face in a hole not 
ten feet distant. Then the sentry stopped, 
leaned on his gun and waited in the dripping fog. 
Jimmy lay like a stone, trying to breathe without 
moving his back muscles. And when he heard 
125 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


that sentry splash slowly on he lifted an eye and 
watched. 

“Close work!” he whispered again and got to 
his feet, kicked off some of the clinging soil of 
France and sped on with a glance at his com- 
pass. He was traveling southeasterly all right 
again, and somewhere he knew the Armies of 
France, Great Britain and the good old U. S. A. 
were barring his path so he couldn’t miss ’em ! 

And a half mile out on that foggy plain when 
he had begun to watch closely for trench or out- 
post, ready to sing out lest some over vigilant 
sniper shoot him, Jimmy was challenged sharply. 

“All right!” yelled Jimmy. “Friend, Frenchy! 
Me — big as a house !” 

And he hastily jerked off that Bavarian cap 
to thrust it into the courier’s sack. Then he 
started: “Say, maybe I got the whole war plan 
of the Kaiser’s general staff here.” 

And when the big, bearded poilu reached Cor- 
poral Jimmy May with another sharp hail, and 
then saw it was a Sammie busily rummaging in 
the Kaiser’s mail pouch, he laughed wonderingly. 

Jimmy was holding up a pair of gray socks 
and a big porcelain pipe. 

126 


CLOSE WORK 


“And did I spend the whole afternoon just to 
steal that!” he murmured. “Wish I could send 
the pipe back to the kid from Bavaria.” 

The outpost guard came closer, still keeping 
his bayonet alertly at the challenge, but grin- 
ning at the American who had appeared out of 
German land with his loot. 

“Arretez! Mon Amir 

“Fine,” retorted Jimmy, “whatever it is.” 

Then he dug down in his shirt for his grimy 
little phrase-book while the guard watched him 
rubbing the dog-eared pages. Jimmy never 
seemed able to memorize his French at all. 

“Ha! Now, listen — ” he said, “ jay pair-doo 
le shem-mang! Get that — I’ve lost my shew , - 
mang ! Parley-voo me back to where I belong. 
Frenchie, I’ll give you the Kaiser’s socks, if you 
show me le droit shemmang 

“Oui, monsieur r 

The outpost pointed politely back the road. 
Jimmy May set off and his escort followed until 
he turned the wanderer over to a sergeant at a 
cross-roads hut. Then Jimmy was taken to an 
officer who spoke English and who listened in- 
credulously to his story. But there was the 
127 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


Kaiser’s military mail pouch and the pipe. The 
last he saw of the German socks they were stick- 
ing out of the tunic of the grinning guard who 
couldn’t get his French talk. But Jimmy didn’t 
care; when they finally let him swing up on a 
big motor truck and sent him back to the Amer- 
ican lines with an explanation, he was too tired 
to bother about anything. But the next day 
when his companion of the parachute descent 
hunted him up to hear the rest of the adventure. 
Corporal May presented the porcelain pipe to 
Lieutenant Cook. He himself didn’t smoke, 
anyhow. 


CHAPTER VI 


BUNKER HOLE 

A ND now if Monsieur le Corporal will apply 
his eye to the end of the periscope,” the 
smiling poilu continued, “he will see what has 
excited our curiosity for the last hour. Look 
very carefully, the sun is almost gone on that 
rough ground, but perhaps — well, what is it, my 
friend?” 

Safe in the deep trench over which a slow but 
deadly, grazing fire from the German snipers 
made direct observation difficult, Corporal May 
steadied his eyes before the clear mirrors that re- 
flected the brown and dismal expanse of No 
Man’s Land. At first that was all he could dis- 
cover — shell-torn heaps and depressions, and the 
dim contour of hills and ragged trees beyond the 
enemy’s hidden positions. 

“A little to the left of a direct line from this 
post,” went on the young, brown-bearded 
Frenchman, “you will see the top of the British 
129 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


tank wallowed down in the big shell crater where 
they had to leave it this morning. Hardly vis- 
ible, is it not?” 

“I got it,” retorted Corporal Jimmy eagerly; 
“yes, it’s almost flat with the ground level, but — 
I see ! — something white is moving, a bit towards 
our side!” 

“Good eyes!” cried the French rifle grenadier. 
“Some one has lived there then through the gas, 
and signals us. All day we have kept the big 
crater under close observation, thinking the 
Bodies would try to occupy it and capture the 
tank. But this is the first sign of life there. We 
have reported it to our captain, and to the Eng- 
lish engineers. Of the eight men of the tank, 
driven out this morning by the gas, after our at- 
tack failed, three are missing, the British officers 
report. Suppose, Monsieur le Corporal, one 
poor fellow lived, kicking around helpless in that 
steel box?” 

“He sure couldn’t get back now if he w r ere 
able,” said Jimmy, “but suppose also the Ger- 
mans had managed to reach the tank, and this 
signal was a trick?” 

“Our officers have discussed that and it may be 

130 


BUNKER HOLE 


so. There is only one way to decide, and I vol- 
unteered for it.” 

Jimmy stared at the short, sturdy young 
Frenchman who sat smilingly down on the nar- 
row platform of the firing pit. On either side, 
a yard away, other soldiers were standing to the 
ready rifles which lay out between the sandbags 
of the parapet, and along the trench others 
drowsed indifferently while off immediate duty. 
Here and there among them were soldiers of 
America, fellows of Jimmy’s own battalion, scat- 
tered through the French first-line troops of this 
sector to familiarize themselves with the lay of the 
land before they took it over. The Sammies had 
crept cautiously up the communications to-day 
after the sharp attack which the French had de- 
livered following the advance of the four British 
armored cars, or “tanks,” which had cleaned out 
a small salient of the German line to the left. 
But directly in front of this position the raid had 
been driven back, by enfilading machine gun fire, 
and the tank on the extreme right had been gas- 
bombed until the occupants had to leave it and 
be dragged back, dazed and helpless, by the re- 
tiring French infantrymen. The English over to 
131 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 

the left of the sector where the American bat- 
talion had been sandwiched in among their 
French comrades, had been too harassed all day 
by a concentrated artillery fire to think of the 
abandoned tank. 

“You’re going to scout out there?” exclaimed 
Jimmy. “Well, say — that would be a man’s- 
sized job all right! Sure as anything the Ger- 
mans will be poking out there, too, after dark!” 

“Surely,” the grenadier shrugged, “but that is 
why, my friend, Sammee! There is a wounded 
Englishman there, and we must be there first.” 

Jimmy gazed admiringly at Private Char- 
bonnet who spoke English as good as his own. 
He took off his steel helmet and wiped the sweat 
that the last rays of a July sun, striking along 
the hot trench, brought out on his brow. He just 
couldn’t have this smiling Frenchie discussing so 
dangerous an undertaking with such calm and 
clear lightness of mind. 

“Who’s going with you?” Jimmy burst out 
suddenly. 

“No one. Not for the first scout. It will be 
highly dangerous ground, each side looking for 
132 


BUNKER HOLE 

something to happen, you see, in regard to the 
British tank!” 

“Oh, I see!” retorted Jimmy. “Well, now, I 
think---” then he caught sight of his senior cap- 
tain crowding slowly along past the trench de- 
fenders. 

Suddenly Jimmy turned from the firing sta- 
tion and elbowed his way back until he stopped 
before Captain B anion at the turn of the traverse. 
The officer was making a silent inspection, and, 
with a glance along at the silent khaki-clad fig- 
ures among the men in the French horizon blue, 
he was turning back from the firing trench. 

“Sir!” Jimmy almost touched his sleeve to de- 
tain him. 

“Squad all posted for this stand-to, sir?” 
queried Captain Banion. “Everything all right, 
Corporal, up here?” 

“With us — yes, sir! Fine as can be! But out 
there — ” Jimmy waved his hand up to the para- 
pet, “a fellow’s out there, they say. Some one 
from that busted-down tank, sir, they think. And 
the French are going to send a one man patrol 
out to see. Right up near the German line, sir, 
and a little, sawed-off Frenchman with whiskers 
133 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


is going to crawl it, and he smiles like it was all 
sorts of a lark to tackle it!” 

“Ah, I imagine. Just like ’em.” The big cap- 
tain smiled, himself, at Corporal Jimmy. “And 
I suppose it’ll raise a racket here to-night and 
you boys’ll get a taste. I hope the Frenchman 
brings back his chap all right.” 

“Yes, but — Captain! Hate to have ’em tackle 
it, and us — sticking safe in this ditch ! If getting 
this blamed Britisher back from his hole starts 
any fireworks, we ought to be in it. Just for — 
do you know what to-day is, sir?” 

“To-day, sir?” The senior captain turned 
w^onderingly. 

“It’s the night before the Fourth of July!” re- 
torted Jimmy, eagerly. “A hundred and forty- 
two years ago we Yankees started a little fire- 
works of our own against the British, didn’t we, 
sir? And along came the Frenchies and gave us 
a boost ! Now, here’s a chance for a Frenchie and 
me to go out tackling the British again — only to 
lug one of ’em in out of a bad hole, sir. You 
see how I feel about it, sir?” 

Captain B anion stared silently. Then he 
rubbed his chin. He had been Jimmy’s second 
134 


BUNKER HOLE 


lieutenant back in Mexican border days, and he 
knew Jimmy as a father knows his eldest born. 
Then he smiled. 

“Is that how you feel, Corporal? Exactly so. 
Hands across the sea, eh? Report to me at eight 
o’clock — I’ll ask permission for you from the 
major just that way — and it might tickle the 
fancy of the English engineers down the line as 
well.” 

“Thank you, sir!” Jimmy May saluted and 
turned back to the little pocket of a firing trench 
which was dug out a little in advance of the main 
line and isolated so that, if a high explosive 
dropped into it, the damage would be confined 
to this squad of defenders alone. The French 
snipers on watch were laughing and joking; it 
was just after supper on a calm summer night; 
and after the little brush with the Boches that 
morning, though the objective in front had not 
been immediately gained, they were not down- 
cast. It was part of the slow, persistent war 
game to hold and drive, defend and attack until, 
bit by bit, the ground was won from the enemy. 

Jimmy found his amiable friend, Monsieur 
Charbonnet of the Grenadiers, tenderly inspect- 
135 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


ing his feet under a little dugout and crawled in 
beside him on the boards. 

“Hi, Mister le Frenchman,” he smiled, “that 
little jaunt of yours — I think I’ll shag along with 
you!” 

“Eh, my friend?” 

“If you and your officers don’t object?” 

“Not if — ” The brown-bearded young 
Frenchman looked Jimmy over carefully. He 
seemed satisfied, even pleased. 

“I know what you mean! If I’m qualified, 
eh? Done some scouting myself. Always pulled 
through, too, if I do say it. Our battalion com- 
mander wouldn’t let me go out if he didn’t think 
I was right for the job, you know. Going out 
early?” 

“At ten o’clock. I will need you, my friend, 
for undoubtedly there is a badly wounded man 
to bring in. I thought you would volunteer, see- 
ing it was dangerous.” Monsieur Charbonnet 
laughed lightly. “You understand I had heard 
of you — you are the famous corporal of your in- 
fantry regiment who refused a lieutenancy, and 
has been mentioned twice already to your com- 
manding general for gallantry. If America had 
136 


BUNKER HOLE 

a Legion of Honor medal it would be yours, 
eh?” 

“Cheer up,” retorted Jimmy; “let’s talk busi- 
ness. Any particular preparations?” 

“I will take a service pistol and my big trench 
knife. If we are trapped a rifle would be of lit- 
tle use at best.” 

“Good! I’ll be with you at ten.” Jimmy 
turned back to hunt up his platoon commander 
and report that he was to present himself in 
person back at the battalion headquarters in a 
deep dugout of the communications. But an or- 
derly had already brought notification of Cor- 
poral’s May’s detachment for the night patrol, 
so Sergeant Milbank merely looked Jimmy over 
with gruff interest. 

“You be back here for the mornin’ count, son 
— that’s all. It’ll be the Glorious Fourth, and 
not Merry Christmas — y’ understand?” 

“Sure!” laughed Jimmy, “that’s why I’m go- 
ing!” 

It was a few minutes before ten when Cor- 
poral May groped his way along the silent com- 
munication passage from B Company’s rest sta- 
tion to the front trenches. The stars just made 
137 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


light enough to see the forms of sleeping men 
over which he stepped on the boarding and then 
crowded past the sentries every few yards on 
their raised spaces where they could command 
the fire zone out to the barbed wire. A strange 
quiet reigned after the lively sniping duels of 
the afternoon, and the artillery battle of the 
morning. Here and there a rifle cracked, and off 
to the west the big guns rumbled slowly. But 
just here, although hundreds of men lay in ap- 
pointed stations straining their eyes through the 
dark for the approach of the foe on either side, 
nothing broke the calm of the July night. 

Private Charbonnet whispered greeting to his 
American friend when they met in the advanced 
fire trench. The young Frenchman had been a 
shipping clerk in an English exporting house be- 
fore the war, and knew the language as well as 
Corporal May. Leaning across the parapet he 
whispered his plans for the adventure. They 
were simple enough. Once past their own wires 
the two scouts would merely creep and steal 
silently as possible out to the great shell crater 
in which the disabled tank was sunk. There they 
would lie and observe for some time, and when 
138 


BUNKER HOLE 


satisfied that no enemy was about, they would 
search for the supposed wounded Englishman. 
If any mishap befell either of the two the sur- 
vivor was to make his way back and report the 
afF air. 

So, with a “good-bye and good luck” from his 
old bunky, Eddie Perkins, who came down the 
line to see him off, Jimmy May slipped over the 
sandbags and walked stealthily after the agile 
Frenchman. Once outside the wire defenses and 
fifty yards on, Charbonnet signaled Jimmy to 
lie down. Carefully they studied the quiet dark. 
The tank lay a thousand feet ahead and to the 
left, much nearer the German lines than the 
French. That was why, when the scouts had 
made the most definite calculation possible of its 
exact location, they had to crawl the last hundred 
yards with the silence of a fox. 

To miss the big crater meant stumbling upon 
the enemy’s line even if he had no patrols out in 
front as was probable. They must get the lone 
Britisher away as secretly as they came. 

Jimmy crawled two paces to the left of his 
friend. When a listening pause was made, Char- 
bonnet would kick the American gently on the 
139 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


arm. Then they would lie with chins in the dirt, 
still as the shell-torn clods. At last the French- 
man crept directly across Jimmy’s path to the 
left, stopping him. Mouth to ear he whispered: 

“We must be far enough. Now to make way 
parallel to the German line and find the spot. 
The stillness is strange, is it not? A star bomb 
now would surely betray us, we are on too high 
land.” 

Jimmy nodded. He feared they were too far 
past the line where the tank must be. They knew 
by the many small craters that they were close 
in the area where the barrage had smashed at the 
German first line. So now they crept on through 
the dark slightly away and to the left ; and pres- 
ently Charbonnet crouched back on his friend. 
Silently he thrust an arm past Jimmy’s nose. 
Staring ahead the Corporal made it out now. 
A depression in the earth where one of the tre- 
mendous high-explosive shells had mined it out, 
and there lay a dim, straight line, a mere darker 
spof under the stars. 

Charbonnet crawled to the edge of the crater, 
and Jimmy reached it a yard distant. Then they 
watched incessantly, ears strained also against 
140 


BUNKER HOLE 


the slightest sound. The German trenches must 
be not seventy yards beyond this hole. And pres- 
ently Jimmy’s alert ear picked up a noise, it 
seemed a mere scratching, then muffled taps. 
They came from the disabled steel monster down 
in the hole. 

After a moment the Frenchman nudged Jim- 
my’s leg and pulled himself over the huge, hard 
clods down in the crater. Corporal May fol- 
lowed to find his friend on his knees, a hand up- 
raised to the broad, corrugated “crawl” of the 
caterpillar tractor. Between this belted foot of 
the big tank and the one on the other side lay the 
two spiked wheels with the chains leading through 
the armor by which the thing was steered. To 
one of these chains hung a white handkerchief. 
The “stern” of the land battleship lay pointing 
back to the Allied line so that the signal would 
not be observed by the enemy. 

Jimmy had never seen one of the tanks before, 
so he lay under the steering gear while his com- 
rade uprose by the square, open door, looked in 
long and cautiously, and then tapped. When 
Corporal May uprose to join him the Frenchman 
laughed silently. He extended a hand within 
141 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


the steel threshold and waved it slowly, tapping 
the wall. 

They didn’t want either to be shot for a Boche, 
or to alarm the lone defender. F or there was no 
disabled Englishman in the big armored tractor. 
Instead, by the dimmest sort of light from a fast- 
dying pocket light they saw a grimy, greasy, 
khaki-clad figure bending over a section of the 
corrugated belt tread, heaving mightily on a short 
crowbar and then stopping to get his breath. 

“ Tap -tap -tap !” went Monsieur Charbonnet’s 
finger nails on the steel. The figure within turned 
slowly, then whirled to seize a rifle. 

“Hold, there!” whispered Jimmy. “Friends, 
man!” 

The man stopped. “Strike me dead,” he whis- 
pered, “but you were a long time cornin’!” 

The rescuers were slipping through the aper- 
ture. It was too dark to see more than the steel 
beams and braces of the armored roof and sides, 
and the heavy motor centered over the truck 
frame. But in a bulging sponson on either side 
was a machine-gun; and in the fore part of the 
tank were the steering seat and wheel and the 
slits for the lookouts and riflemen. There were 
142 


BUNKER HOLE 


gas tanks of steel, and protected ammunition 
magazines along the tractor frame; and on each 
side the heavy, grease-covered gears of the twen- 
ty-four-inch caterpillar treads that ran along the 
ground and back over the outside of the armor 
overhead and forward, so that the monster moved 
on by laying its own track, yard by yard, under 
its projecting front. 

But Jimmy had neither the time nor the il- 
lumination to study the tank’s interior. The sol- 
dier mechanic was wiping the grease off his hands 
and grasping Jimmy’s own. 

“W’y it’s a bloomin’ Sammy! Wot you doin’ 
here, mate?” 

“Come to get you back,” whispered Jimmy. 
“Thought you were wounded.” 

“Wounded, me eye! I wanted ’elp to pull 
this old elephant out o’ ’ere! ’Ung that signal 
rag out there for my mates to crawl out and give 
me a ’and!” 

The soldier of France and the soldier of Amer- 
ica gazed speechlessly at this artless and ag- 
grieved soldier of Old England. 

“ ’Elp !” continued the latter. “I get this old 
girl goin’, and it’ll be Fritzie that yells for ’elp ! 

143 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


I’m sore at ’em, I am! Slung dirty gas pots at 
me all mornin’, but they don’t fancy cornin’ over 
the top to tyke me, no they don’t !” 

“They’ll come to-night, Monsieur Tommee!” 
gasped Private Charbonnet; “that’s why we have 
come out to you!” 

“Didn’t they most croak you this morning with 
the gas?” whispered Corporal Jimmy. 

“They did fluster us a bit. The bloomin’ stuff 
got up in our car and ’ung there. So we ’ad to 
abandon ship, maties — the officer and the two 
gunners and the driver and me. The mechanic, 
’e was killed by a bullet kickin’ in past a gun 
shield, and the two ’elpers were hurt. We 
crawled out and lay sobbin’ in our masks, and 
the infantry took ’em all back but me. W’en 
the gas lifted out of the ’ole a bit, the Fritzies 
were slappin’ a ’ot fire down back o’ me so I 
tykes one look back at the lines and I says : ‘It’s 
better up in our old iron kettle, it is,’ so I crawls 
back in. The gas it thins out, and then I sees 
this old girl is all right except a chunk of ’igh 
explosive shell landed up in her tractor belt. I 
digs it out and now I’m slidin’ the belt back 
on the drive gear. Then, if I ’ad a bloke to steer 
144 


BUNKER HOLE 


her I’d drive the old girl up out o’ this ’ole and 
do a parade up and down between the lines to 
show ’em !” 

“You’re crazy with the heat!” remarked Jim- 
my. “Now let’s make a crawl back out of here 
before the Fritzies ” 

“Two machine-guns and a stack o’ rifles and a 
case of hand bombs,” retorted the tank defender. 
“Fritzie’ll have a time tykin’ us!” 

“But, my friend!” put in Private Charbonnet. 
“It is orders to return at once. With you, or 
any one found out here!” 

“My orders was from the Thirtieth Battalion, 
Royal Engineers,” answered the Tommy, “and 
my nyme is Bill Frost — temporarily givin’ ’is 
own orders to ’imself. But, matey, you make the 
crawl back and report for me — Major Archer, 
over in our section — sayin’ Bill Frost, ’e needs 
a driver for this old bus and then ’e’ll come ’ome 
’imself!” 

Corporal Jimmy May was laughing silently in 
spite of himself. The dirty, oil-spattered Tom- 
my was grinning too. The French Grenadier 
shrugged, then he, too, smiled. 

“Well, then, it is so! The English they are 
145 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 

stubborn as the American mules ! I shall go back 
— my commandant will report to the English 
headquarters. Voila! That is all can be done. 
The English will have to get you out!” 

“You said it, Frenchy ! Much obliged, but you 
say Bill Frost is still ’ere with ’is car. Still — now, 
what’s that?” 

They heard nothing. Jimmy stole to the door 
above the steering chains. He saw nothing save 
the stars and dark. But some one had to report 
back at once. Jimmy had no orders except to 
follow the experienced French patrol. But as 
Private Charbonnet was cautiously lifting a leg 
to slip out and down to the ground, Jimmy bent 
to whisper. 

“I’ll stick along with this chap. Report to my 
sergeant. If I don’t get out it’s only one gone — 
and I can’t leave a chap like this.” 

Out on the ground Private Charbonnet of the 
Grenadiers made a silent and grand flourish. He 
even bowed to Corporal May of the American 
Infantry. 

“It is understood, my comrade. Comrades all 
— the three of us! And there will be some stir- 
ring to rescue you before dawn. Adieu!” 

146 


BUNKER HOLE 


Jimmy saw him slip to the edge of the crater, 
his figure against the starlight for a moment, 
then he dropped for the long crawl back. 

Bill Frost came stealthily past the motors, cov- 
ering his light. 

“Matey, you goin’ to stick by me?” 

“Sure! What did you think I’d do?” 

They grasped hands silently in the darkness. 

“First one o’ the Sammies I laid eyes on,” mut- 
tered Bill Frost, “if they’re all like you — Oh, 
well!” 

“But, Bill, you ain’t going to try and run this 
machine out of here? If you start the motors 
you’ll have the Boches swarming up and after us 
in a minute.” 

“And our lines’ll start a fire on ’em that’ll make 
’em ’unt their ’oles again, too. No, the ’Uns’ll 
sneak us if they do anything.” 

Jimmy reflected. That was true. 

“Come, now,” whispered Bill, “I been mufflin’ 
my tools with rags to fix this belt, and now with 
you to ’elp, I can put this old box ready to run, or 
fight, or waltz, just as I get orders from the 
Royal Engineers.” 

He had been struggling all afternoon to hook 
147 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


up the great heavy chains that connected the 
right-hand tread; but now, while Jimmy pried the 
links tight, the mechanic soldier had it done in ten 
minutes. 

Then they slipped back in the dark, sat on the 
frame by one of the machine-gun stations, and 
Bill reached out a tin of bully beef to Jimmy. 

“Now we’re ready, matey. The Fritzies ought 
to know we’re ’ere if their lookouts ain’t stone 
deaf. Maybe they think there’s only some poor 
kickin’, gaspin’ lads in ’ere that been gassed all 
day, and so they ain’t goin’ to trouble the tank 
’til they come on in force and counter attack the 
lines. Maybe — hist!” 

Jimmy knelt before the machine-gun shield, his 
ear to the space about the weapon. Long he lis- 
tened but only the gentle stir of the night wind 
came. Bill Frost was forward at the lookout 
slits where the driver was wont to control the 
steel monster. And for an hour or more they 
watched unceasingly. It was the quietest night 
that Jimmy had seen since the Americans had 
come to take this sector from the French defend- 
ers. Uncannily quiet along this mile. Once or 
twice a flare came from the German side off to 
148 


BUNKER HOLE 


the left, and usually a languid rattle of snipers’ 
rifles followed, but nothing happened to bring on 
a real fire exchange. 

Bill came back after awhile. He thought it 
was time some support came from his detach- 
ment who had the tanks in charge. It was two 
o’clock now, and something should be doing. At 
least a courier might creep forward with orders 
for him. But from neither line did friend or foe 
move out across the deadly zone of death to the 
steel leviathan crouched in its nest. 

“It’s monotonous a bit,” grumbled Bill Frost. 
“Daylight’ll be cornin’, and then we’re in for an- 
other day of it, for the snipers’ll let nobody over 
the top one way or other. Day? — it looks like it 
was cornin’ now, matey!” 

“Day?” echoed Jimmy May. “Say, Bill, do 
you know what day this is? This is the Big 
Day!” 

“It’ll be Big Day if the Fritzies drop a ’igh 
explosive shell on this bloomin’ roof over us. 
That’s all I’m afraid of.” 

“No.” Jimmy shook his friend’s shoulder. 
“Bill, a hundred and forty-two years ago, instead 
of eating bully beef with you, I’d have been 
149 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


slammin’ you over the head with this monkey 
wrench !” 

“Not if I saw you first, Sammy. Wot for 
would you be slammin’ a mate over the ’ead?” 

“Mate? We were starting in to clean up you 
Britishers in jig time! Bill, to-day is the Fourth 
of July!” 

Bill stared. Then he snapped on his pocket 
flash and looked carefully in Jimmy’s face. Then 
he shut off the light and muttered: 

“Strike me dizzy, if it ain’t! Fourth o’ July! 
And ’ere’s you and me fightin’ side by each for 
to make the world safe and sound again, when 
the kings, they muddle it up! I say, that old 
King George the Third, we ’ad then, ’e was a 
TJn ’imself! And if the Frenchies ’adn’t come 
to ’elp you Yankees ’e’d have licked you, and 
England would a ’ad more land but less sense.” 

“Oh — maybe!” retorted Jimmy, “maybe not. 
Maybe you would — maybe not. We had a 
George of our own, who was some George ” 

“And ’ere’s a go. W’y this ’ere old iron box 
that’s shelterin’ you is named King George III. 
A bloke of the Lancashires ’e painted it on the 
frame thinkin’ it was gyme to send a ’Anover 
150 


BUNKER HOLE 


king to pot-hunt the Fritzies! Anid ’ere’s a 
bloomin’ Yankee ’e comes crawlin’ up to get 
be’ind old George — on the Fourth of July!” 

“Good-night!” whooped Jimmy, “I’m going 
home !” 

“Don’t yell so loud — maybe a ’Anover ’Un’ll 
’ear you. Oh, this is rich, Sammy! ’Ere’s me 
and you and old George the Third ” 

“Change the name of the old tank or I beat 
it. Bill. I say ” 

Corporal May stopped abruptly, for faintly 
on the night breeze he had heard a mutter. Bill 
had heard it, too; he was back at his lookout, 
and the Sammy and Tommy lay in the dark, serv- 
ice pistols in hand, watching, listening. For a 
time, nothing. Then Jimmy heard it again, 
hushed voices, a subdued clatter, then it seemed 
the movement of bodies out on that rough, seared 
but invisible ground to his left. 

Then a stir came by his side. Bill was shak- 
ing him excitedly. 

“Over the top, mate! They’re cornin’ sure 
as shootin’!” Bill slipped to the rear, drew his 
body up through the steel doorway and listened. 
They could hear more sounds out on the night 
151 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


wind. The British soldier dropped back, stealth- 
ily closed the opening and came rapidly forward 
to Corporal May who knelt in the machine-gun 
sponson. 

“Over the top in force! This ain’t no patrol 
come for to look in this tank. It’s an attack for 
the lines, matey ! A surprise attack without bar- 
rage. They’ll open that on our communications 
w’n our front lines discover the advance. Crawl, 
creep close as can be, and then rush the trenches !” 

“They’re passing us, then? Must think there’s 
nobody here!” 

“If the attack on the front line goes through 
they got this ground anyhow,” whispered Bill. 
“But you and me, Sammy — can you work a 
Lewis gun? Can? — w’y you just got to!” 

“Know a little about it — but what ?” 

“Right and left — enfilade ’em as they pass. 
If we don’t ’it a man of ’em, anyhow we’ll wake 
up five miles of fightin’ men that can!” 

“Take that right gun, then!” whispered Jim- 
my. He was down behind the shield, turning 
the lever that swung the machine-gun muzzle 
higher. Sighting out, he saw that it just cleared 
the level of the ground in the crater of which 
152 


BUNKER HOLE 


the tank was imbedded. “All right!” he whis- 
pered, feeling for the feed mechanism and swing- 
ing the gun to test the freedom of its arc of fire. 
“All right, Bill — start it!” 

He heard Bill of the Royal Engineers finding 
his elevation for the gun in the opposite sponson 
and then, just outside, not fifteen feet away, a 
gruff mutter of surprise. The German infan- 
try were swinging past, the first ones so near that 
Jimmy saw them dimly against the starlight, 
a wave of silent enemies intent on reaching the 
American and French lines. And he heard Bill 
again, this time roaring out like a bull : 

“Let ’er go! Old King George, and ” 

The rest was drowned out in an echoing, snarl- 
ing clamor as Bill opened the machine-gun out 
from the right sponson of the tank. 

“ — And Bunker Hill!” roared Jimmy, and 
he jumped against the shoulder rest, pressed the 
trigger and felt the shock of the gun drive back 
upon him. “Let her go, Bill!” 

The next instant pandemonium was in his ears. 
He had never handled a machine-gun in action 
and but little in training. He didn’t know 
whether he was swinging the muzzle right on the 
153 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 

waves of German infantry out over that dark 
No Man’s Land, or whether he was hitting the 
top of the shell crater, or the distant stars, but 
Corporal May knew he was assisting at the most 
fearful racket that he ever listened to The roar 
of the guns, the acrid smoke drifting back, the 
mechanism getting hotter and hotter to his 
touch — anyhow he was shooting faster than even 
Bill, while outside, now, he saw a sudden green, 
unearthly splotch of light showing up confused 
and straggling men. And beyond that the 
whole front lines of the French as far as he 
could see were breaking out to fire, and the “sev- 
enty-fives” of the American artillery back of 
them were hurling a barrage over and onto the 
German trenches. The German artillery, now 
that the trick advance was uncovered and the 
infantry had to rush back to instant shelter, took 
up the job, and the battle joined far along the 
lines each way. 

Bill Frost was cooling off his machine bar- 
rels, and came dodging around the motor space 
to yell in Jimmy’s ear. The spatter of rifle 
shots against their steel fortress grew quicker, 
154 


BUNKER HOLE 


steadier, glancing from the top each way, for the 
fire of both sides would cover it. 

“We started something!” yelled Jimmy. “We 
did ” 

“We finished something,” yelled Bill. “Broke 
up their gyme ” 

Then there came a crashing explosion just 
outside the tank, and they felt the shock and rat- 
tle of clods on its side. 

“Hi!” yelled Bill again, “must be you Yan- 
kees bombardin’ old King George, the poor old 
beggar of a ’Anover ’Un! Hi, Sammy, you! 
You take a run-crawl back to your bloomin’ ar- 
tillery and tell ’em if they let up we’ll change 
the nyme on this bleedin’ tank !” 

“We’ll call it Bunker Hill!” roared Jimmy, 
“when our outfit gets up here and gets us out, 
we’ll call it Bunker Hill, just in honor of the 
Fourth of July fireworks!” 

“Bunker ’ill?” retorted Bill, “this ain’t no 
’ill. This is a ’ole. We’ll call it Bunker ’Ole.” 

“Bunker Hole,” retorted Jimmy, “that’s good 
— but I’m glad, Tommy, to be over here pulling 
you out of one instead of trying to put you 
into one as I would have been compelled to do 
155 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


a hundred and forty-two years ago if we had 
met!” 

“Ye’r right. ’Ands across the sea, it is! Put 
’er there!” 

The big Tommy Atkins extended a grimy 
hand to Jimmy May. They stood up in the first 
dim dawn of the strangest Fourth of July morn- 
ing that ever a Yankee boy saw, undoubtedly — 
this reeking acid-smelling steel box, while the 
thunder of the guns went on right and left far 
down the line. 

“Some celebration!” yelled Jimmy. “Folks 
back home haven’t any such fireworks as this, 
Bill!” 

“ ’E ’is plenty,” retorted Bill Frost, “and 
come on, now — let’s sneak it before it’s more than 
plenty! Follow me on the crawl, Sammy, from 
’ole to ’ole. We’ll have to clean the Fritzies 
out a bit along there before we can rescue ole 
King George. ’E’ll just ’ave to sit ’ere on ’is 
lone and listen to yer celebration. On, now!” 

And it was some crawl the two of. them made 
over the shell-torn No Man’s Land back to their 
front lines. When they finally did worm down 
between the sandbags and the last plop of the 
156 


BUNKER HOLE 


German bullets had dug harmlessly into the dirt 
around them, Bill Frost stood up and grasped 
Jimmy May’s hand again. Monsieur Char- 
bonnet had hurried up into the fire trench when 
it was reported that the two adventurers had re- 
turned unhurt. He had a tiny American flag 
which he stuck in the trench wall and then saluted 
smilingly. 

“To your glorious day. Monsieur le Cor- 
poral!” he cried. 

“Put ’er there!” shouted British Bill. “It’s 
a day we’ll all remember, Sammy! We’re a 
bunch of bloomin’ pals, now, ain’t we?” 


CHAPTER VII 
BR ER FRITZIE 


CORPORAL JIMMIE GOES OVER THE TOP AT LAST 

O N the narrow boarding above the slush and 
water in the first line trenches Com- 
pany B crouched against the clay wall and wait- 
ed for the thunderous barrage of the American 
artillery to lift before it made its first desperate 
plunge against the German positions “over the 
top” and some two hundred yards away. There 
were grim, hard young faces under the steel hel- 
mets, and glancing past his squad down along 
the olive drab line of crouched backs, Corporal 
May heard not a word nor saw a lip moving. 
The big, smashing test was coming this morning, 
and the Third Battalion knew it; knew, too, that 
only yesterday, after the Sammies had victori- 
ously swept out and taken the German first line, 
they had been compelled to fall back before the 
Bodies’ counter-attack. 

And that had been bad for the new trench 
158 


BITER FRITZIE 


ing there, watch in hand. The officers of the 
shock battalion knew to a second when the bar- 
rage would lift. Then an orderly came jostling 
along the narrow communication ditch, saluted 
and spoke to the officer. And piercing the steady 
roar of the gunfire above came the thin whistle 
of the “Assembly,” for the N.C.O.’s. Corporal 
May was among the squad leaders who crowded 
close to the quiet lieutenant who raised his voice 
sharply to them all. 

“The order is now for this platoon to form 
part of the third wave instead of the first. You 
know what that means — you are to go squad col- 
umn, and clean up the first line trench over 
there after the first and second waves have gone 
over it. They will rush the German communica- 
tions, but you fellows will stop in the first 
trenches and bomb out their dugouts or any- 
thing you see left that does not surrender in- 
stantly. Maybe the advance will leave a lot 
of work for you, maybe nothing at all. But you 
just fall into the trench and clean it out and 
hold it— hold it for the rest who may be driven 
back to it by a counter-attack. Now, all plain?” 

“Yes, sir!” the non-coms chorused eagerly, 
163 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 

and loosened the bomb-case at his left side. For 
Corporal Jimmy and Perky were to be the two 
bombers of the squad file; behind them Tolliver 
and Jones, the bayoneteers, then Fryer and 
Casey, two reserve bomb-throwers, and then the 
two remaining men of Squad Ten with ready 
rifles — all a well-organized “mopping up party,” 
such as most of the company was organized for, 
save other squads contained the machine gunners 
and rifle grenade men. In thin, single squad 
columns the battalion would go over and walk 
very deliberately on into that smoke cloud to 
assault in bombing file, or swing to skirmish line 
for the bayonet as the case might demand when 
they reached the German trench. The Boches 
wouldn’t come out, it was expected, after this 
deluge of fire upon their first line holes all morn- 
ing, but they would, from every undemolished 
concrete “pill box” and every sniper’s loophole, 
pour a murderous fire on the first glimpse of the 
advancing Sammies. 

Corporal May glanced back to the first 
traverse where the communication trench opened 
onto the advanced line. He saw his loved pla- 
toon commander, First Lieutenant Miller, stand- 
162 


BR ER FRITZIE 


of the American guns had increased to the nth 
power — and then, suddenly, it swept down so 
that the single sharp bursts of the laggard field 
guns were audible. 

“Zero!” gasped Jimmy, and then “Steady, 
there! Ready!” 

For instantly the artillery in the rear broke 
out in a fiercer volume than ever, lifting a hun- 
dred yards beyond with its avalanche of shells. 
And just as quick the sharp whistle broke, and 
oyer the battered sandbags all along the line 
the first wave of the Sammies scrambled, leaped 
to their feet and went on. Glancing right and 
left, Jimmy saw the skirmish line disappearing 
in the murk. Three minutes more and the second 
line swept up over the top and followed. Down 
the line to the left a German shell burst, envel- 
oping a squad in black smoke. Out in the rough 
No Man’s Land the fellows still in the trenches 
saw motionless figures here and there. The sec- 
ond wave was growing dim in the curling smoke 
wreaths ahead, and again the barrage lifted 
and smashed at the Boches further on. 

Jimmy’s squad was alternately groaning with 
impatience now, and cheering. The fellows must 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


have won the first enemy line! Jimmy could see 
the liaison officers back of the second wave sig- 
naling to the American lookout posts, for no 
other means of communication was available now 
from the attackers to the troops in reserve. 

“Ready, there!” repeated Jimmy, his eyes 
fixed back to the platoon commander. “Now, 
here goes ” 

Lieutenant Miller had thrust both arms up 
and outward. A series of faint whistles came 
up and down the line of firing pits. And over 
the top went Jimmy May instantly with his cry: 

“Follow me!” 

He knew that the squad column, trained to 
the exact order, had formed and was behind him. 
To right and left he saw the other thin files 
slowly slide up and advance. The platoon offi- 
cers were between, here and there, and onward 
went the third wave across the shell-torn soil. 
The barrage was descending far ahead now where 
the shock battalions were past the German first 
line and in bayonet formation, striving to attack 
the retreating Bodies. For when the third wave 
reached the disordered trenches, past and through 
the destroyed barbed wires, it seemed there was 
166 


BRER FRITZIE 


little to do. Jimmy had a sense of disappoint- 
ment when he stood by Lieutenant Miller’s side 
just on the German parapet as the officer shouted 
for the bombers to close up. The trench was 
deserted, save for scattered dead and wounded, 
and a few scared groups of Germans already 
surrendered and passed by the charging Sammies 
ahead. 

Lieutenant Miller was pointing down the 
trench. 

“In with you, boys! Follow the communica- 
tions, and scout out every opening, cave and 
bomb proof! We can’t leave any nest of ’em 
behind to tear into our rear with machine-guns! 
It’s your work to see to that ! Take that traverse, 
Corporal May!” 

Jimmy saw that the other squads, each in- 
structed to its work ere it ever left the American 
side, were hastily tearing down the sandbag para- 
pets and erecting them on the parados across 
the German trench. The ragged ditch was full 
of sweating fellows with shovels, picks, bags, 
transforming the trench so that, if the assault 
troops were driven back, they could hold the Ger- 
man first line against the counter-attack. 

167 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


But Corporal May’s squad was formed for 
other work and more exciting. Stumbling on 
along the trench he reached the traverse which 
marked the turn of this ditch to the irregular 
communication trench rearward. Eddie Per- 
kins was right behind him, the conical, corru- 
gated, hand-bomb held ready for Jimmy’s signal. 
But dodging around the traverse, Jimmy found 
nothing but a single dirty German soldier sit- 
ting by a wounded man and holding up his hand. 

“Kamarad!” he muttered sullenly, and Jimmy 
pointed back the way his squad had come. The 
prisoner dodged past the yelling file which fol- 
lowed close at the Corporal’s heels down the zig- 
zagging ditch, knowing that the supporting 
squads would follow the bombing party. They 
could hear the uproar of an infantry battle some- 
where above and to their left, and the thunder 
of the barrage drowned Jimmy’s voice when he 
halted. He thrust up one hand when he reached 
the second traverse, for he had caught sight of a 
gray-green arm and a bayonet flash around the 
dirt wall. The Boches were going to hold this 
point, were they? 

Then he heard a warning yell from Tolliver, 
168 


BR ER FRITZIE 


the tall bayonet expert of the squad, in the rear 
of the file. Up over the dirt wall a dull little 
object had hurtled. And back dashed Jimmy’s 
squad, throwing themselves close against the 
muddy trench bottom. The next instant the 
whole trench end by the traverse was a blur of 
dirt and smoke, and a hail of clods and sticks 
showered over the Sammies hugging the wall. 
The Boche bomb had fallen short and harmless. 
And Jimmy May was up on his feet instantly, 
with Private Perkins at his side. They dashed 
into the smoke-filled end of the ditch. 

“Let ’er go!” yelled Corporal Jimmy, and 
slowly, with the long methodical heave of the 
trained bomb-thrower, the time-gauge set as 
it left his hand, he pitched the wicked little cone 
up over the dirt barricade. The dull explosion 
came instantly. Behind Jimmy, Perkins had 
swung a bomb up in a slow T , high arc to fall di- 
rectly down over the same spot. And another 
crash came beyond the traverse. Then, past the 
two bomb-throwers, crowded the two bayonet 
men whose duty it was to rush the traverse ere 
the enemy could recover from the explosions. 
When Corporal Jimmy came panting around 
169 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 

the dirt wall he saw Tolliver far ahead in the 
murky trench. There was not a German any- 
where. 

Each way from the turn of the traverse 
Jimmy glanced. Back along the way the squad 
had charged he saw other Sammies pouring, with 
Lieutenant Miller at their head, quick to support 
the bomb attack. Ahead, along the communica- 
tion trench to the next zigzag where another 
traverse shut off the view, Jimmy saw nothing 
save deserted equipment, arms and disordered 
sandbags. Then suddenly he heard the spiteful 
snarl of bullets past his head, and Fryer, one of 
his bomb carriers, collapsed to the trench floor. 
The next instant big Casey staggered to the 
traverse wall and sank down. 

“Got me — shoulder!” he gasped. “Look out 
there — they’re rakin’ this ditch!” 

“Down — there!” yelled Jimmy. “Every man 
of you — down!” 

They were flat on their stomachs in the trench 
while over their heads went the zing-zing of a 
steady fusillade, and the dull spatter of bullets 
in the dirt wall showered stinging bits of sand 
upon them. 


170 


BR ER FRITZIE 


“Machine-gun,” muttered Perkins, “and an 
enfilade fire right down the trench! We might 
have expected it!” 

He crawled forward and dragged the uncon- 
scious Fryer back to the shelter of the traverse. 
Casey crept back himself, and Jimmy hastily ap- 
plied the soldier’s first aid to the big Irishman’s 
shattered upper arm. 

“They got us in a fine pocket!” growled 
wounded Casey. “Go back, Jimmy? Why, we 
can’t — look behind you!” 

Corporal May glanced back to where he had 
thought the supporting platoon must be. They 
had retreated behind the next turn of the trench, 
and here and there a motionless figure lay. And 
Jimmy was wondering at that when, almost by 
his ear it seemed, he heard the staccato barking 
of a machine-gun now audible above the crash 
of the barrage overhead. The section behind 
them w T as cleaned up also by an enfilade fire — 
and this must come from a point in the traverse 
wall right by the squad’s shelter! 

Corporal May stared. Another one of his 
squad was struck in the thigh by a ricocheting 

F 

bullet from the further traverse. Three men 
171 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


wounded and disabled, and his other five aban- 
doned in this German trench, hugging the point 
of dirt and crouching close to the wall with a rain 
of machine-gun fire over their heads! It was a 
new problem and a desperate one for Corporal 
May. He knew that if the first assault troops 
were driven back he and his men would be cut off 
and killed or captured. But chief of all he re- 
membered that he had no orders to retreat even 
if he could. The bomb squad was to go as far 
as it could in this communication trench and 
hold it for the support section. And this sec- 
tion had found the ground too hot and had sought 
shelter where it could. 

Jimmy stared up at the curling smoke above 
this narrow slit in the earth. Back he crawled 
past his three wounded comrades and stared 
again at the rough wall of dirt. The machine- 
gun was cleverly concealed somewhere there just 
where it could rake the trench; just as another 
one was in the next traverse two hundred feet 
beyond where it had prevented further progress 
of Corporal May’s bombers. 

“Got to dig this fellow out!” shouted Jimmy. 
“The entrance to this dugout is around the 
172 


BR ER FRITZIE 


traverse, but the machine-gun in the next 
traverse covers it so’s it can't be touched. Fine 
Work, eh?” 

Scanning the smoky dirt wall, Jimmy pres- 
ently could make out the firing point. It had 
been well concealed by debris and bits of board, 
but Jimmy knew that the muzzle of the deadly 
gun was there and that the operator sat, un- 
doubtedly protected by concrete or steel, immune 
from anything but a shell unless he could be 
attacked from the rear — which the other gun 
prevented. And the machine-gun men would 
fight to the death — they were left behind for that 
very purpose, giving their lives to delay the se- 
curing of the captured trench until the Germans 
could organize a counter-attack. Already, from 
the increasing fire over the top, Jimmy thought 
this was coming. If the Americans were driven 
back even to the German first trench, Jimmy and 
his bunch were gone if they couldn’t fall back 
with their comrades. Lieutenant Miller would 
think his advance bombing party was all cleaned 
out when it didn’t fall back before the machine- 
gun enfilade. 

The smoky trench now hid all vision back to 
173 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


the front line, but the machine-gun continued its 
steady barking. The bombers never could get 
back unless they stopped that gun which was 
right by their side but buried in the earth wall. 

Jimmy pointed out the machine-gun emplace- 
ment to Perkins as the latter crawled to his side. 

“Maybe we can batter him down!” yelled Jim- 
my. “Ready, Perky !” 

“Batter ourselves, that’s what we’ll do!” re- 
torted Perkins. “Too close, and we can’t shelter 
around the traverse or the other fellow will get 
us!” 

That was true. The machine-gun aperture 
was not tw T enty-five feet from where the squad 
crouched. They were safe enough from it, but 
any bomb directed there would certainly do more 
damage to the throwers out in the open trench 
than to the sheltered machine-gun man. 

Jimmy wiped his perspiring brow. Perkins 
shook his head. 

“I can go crawl clear up under that fellow’s 
roost and chuck a shot in on him — unless he’s 
closed up in a concrete box, as is likely the case,” 
growled Perkins. 

“Yes — and any time you don’t make it, you’ll 
174 


BR ER FRITZIE 


have a bomb going off right in your face,” said 
Tolliver, “for it’ll blow right back on you. And 
if we back out, out of range of our own bomb, 
why, the gun’ll rake us! Fine business, bucky! 
Oh, very fine!” 

Jimmy squirmed around and looked at his 
three wounded men lying very still in the mud 
of the trench bottom. He had to get them out 
and his five unwounded too, and do it on his own 
initiative if the support failed to come up. And 
the support couldn’t unless this nervy machine- 
gun operator was silenced. He didn’t know how 
the attack on the German second line had gone, 
but it was none of his business. If his squad had 
been dropped down in a barrel it couldn’t have 
been more ignorant of aff airs outside. 

“There must be a way into that hole, and it’s 
around the traverse wall,” argued Jimmy to him- 
self. “We can’t rush it, for the fellow up the 
line will riddle us. But ” 

He turned and crawled back to the traverse 
point and cautiously thrust his head around the 
wall of dirt and crumbling boards. Two hun- 
dred feet up this section the other machine-gun 
man had a full view of this point and the battle 
175 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


smoke had not settled in this trench so heavily 
as Jimmy had hoped. Their own section was dim 
and choking with the fumes of the bombs and ma- 
chine-gun volleys. 

But Corporal May edged on to where he could 
look clear up the further section. The wicked 
plump-plump of the bullets still tore into the wall 
above him, but slowly now. The wily machine- 
gunner was merely waiting for the sight of a 
Sammy around that zigzag of wall. Nothing 
could stand in that narrow slit under his fire, 
any more than it could in the advanced section 
beyond. 

Jimmy was trying to make out the entrance to 
the machine-gun nest around the traverse. It 
was a broken mass of boards, sandbags and crum- 
bled earth where the American artillery had 
smashed the trench above. 

“But there must be a hole!” thought Corporal 
May, “and one man with a couple of bombs could 
put that fellow out of business.” 

He called Perkins to him and talked quietly 
back over his shoulder. 

“Keep low here, Perky. Now, it’s no manner 
of use for the squad to rush this. One fellow 
176 


BR ER FRITZIE 


might. If I find a hole to drop in, I’m all right. 
If not, why — well, that man up the ditch will 
have some quick target practice, I guess. 
And — ” Jimmy looked at Perky’s dirty face — “if 
I — don’t make it, you got to get the boys back 
somehow !” 

“Jimmy,” retorted Perky, “this is my chance!” 

“No, it’s mine. I’m quick on my feet — just 
a rush of twenty feet, and if I find something 
to drop behind I’m all right!” 

“And if you don’t — ” muttered Perky — “all 
right. Corporal! But you’ll find me cornin’, 
too!” 

Corporal May shook his head. He was meas- 
uring the distance with his eye that he had to 
rush along that battered dirt trench wall in full 
line of fire from the hidden gunner beyond the 
first traverse. The entrance to the first machine- 
gun shelter must be some ten yards away only, 
but the desperate chance was to find refuge from 
the other one. Jimmy had unslung his pack and 
kicked it back. Only his bomb-case he carried 
with him, for a rifle would do him no good in 
any case. He either won or lost all on the first 
rush to bomb out the machine-gun. 

177 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


“Well,” he whispered to Perky, “here for it!” 

And hunching his knees up under him he arose 
swiftly and raced straight along the dirt wall in 
the face of the crackling bullet hail. He felt a 
blow on his steel helmet and another smash 
through his web belt as he made the last bound 
and flung himself against a huge lump of dirt 
tumbled from the wall. And plump — plump — 
plump! went the volley from the gun two hun- 
dred feet up the trench, spattering above and 
around and under him, knocking his eyes full of 
dirt. But he lay in a jagged crevice that some 
Yankee shell had cracked out of the wall, and 
in and up this he slid and crouched, staring about. 

And there, sure enough, to his left and lower 
down, was a low wooden frame that had been a 
door, smashed in and sagging, but it must be 
the machine-gun shelter exit. The second ma- 
chine-gun was kicking bullets all over the spot, 
for the operator knew the lone attacker’s purpose. 

“We’ll see to you later, Fritzie!” gasped Cor- 
poral May; “just now I want this particular 
rabbit!” 

Glancing back to the bend of the traverse, he 
saw a helmet bobbing slowly, close to the trench 
178 


BR ER FRITZIE 

wall, and he knew it was Private Perkins keep- 
ing a jealous eye on him. If he had gone down 
wounded in his rush, nothing would have kept 
a fat and slow soldier from dashing to drag him 
back. Jimmy waved his hand a bit while he 
recovered his breath. Then, slowly estimating 
each inch of his crawl so that he did not uncover 
his body to the hidden machine-gunner up the 
trench, he slid and wiggled nearer to the low 
doorway just where the traverse abutted slightly 
from the wall. 

Then he had to consider. If he rushed the 
machine-gunner he would have to land clear in- 
side the shelter to avoid the other fellow enfilad- 
ing the trench. And then he might have to fight 
single-handed against a trio or more of Boches. 
And if he stayed where he was he could not be 
sure of silencing the gun. No, it was attack 
again. One bomb dropped right into that hole 
would save the lives of many of his comrades 
when the next attack came, as come it would, 
he knew. 

So Corporal May wiggled to within ten feet 
of the entrance. It was a black, jagged hole un- 
der broken trench timbers with dirt crumbling 
179 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


here and there from above as the bullets plugged 
around it. The last two yards Jimmy crouched 
on knees and elbows. The snarl of the bullets 
quickened. He had a sudden idea that the man 
at the further gun could see him now; if so he 
had to rush. 

So rising swiftly, he made the last lunge that 
carried him into the shelter entrance and fell 
headlong out on smooth dirt. Like a scared 
cat Jimmy was up on his knees. He could hear 
the cracking of the gun ahead, but it was pitch 
dark there. The operator apparently did not 
know he was taken in the rear. Breathlessly 
Jimmy crawled on, struck a concrete edge, and 
then, while the deafening racket of the machine- 
gun was in his ears, he saw a glimmer of murky 
light. Then the dim profile of a man moving 
before this. 

Corporal May was directly behind the ma- 
chine-gun and its cool operator, looking straight 
along the line of sight up the first section of 
trench down which his squad had come and from 
which this same gun had driven his company. 
Not ten feet distant from the busy Boche in that 
narrow wedge of concrete emplacement! 

180 


BITER FRITZIE 


And when Corporal May’s eyes grew accus- 
tomed to the gloom, he saw that the enemy was 
alone. No more men were needed, for either 
the machine-gun man could hold off a hundred 
or else he would be mashed out by a heavy shell 
— it was hard to get them otherwise in their 
burrows. Jimmy’s fingers crept to one of his 
corrugated deadly cones, slipping it from the 
case. And then doubt came to him. 

“I suppose that fellow would croak me with- 
out a thought, but I — somehow, hitting a man 
in the back with a bomb — it’s not quite our style, 
somehow! Not quite what I’d like to tell — 
mother about!” 

Then he slipped the bombcase strap from his 
shoulder and crept on. He stood straight up in 
the shelter behind his enemy and suddenly 
dropped on him, both arms locked tight around 
the fellow’s shoulders at the elbows, at the same 
time smashing his knee into the small of his back. 
Over the gunner went, face down, with a choked 
cry, but helpless as a child. 

“Now,” growled Jimmy* “not a wiggle out of 
you — hear me?” 

He was feeling for the German’s service pistol 
181 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


and presently he nudged the muzzle of it into 
the prisoner’s ear, thinking this was better than 
trusting to his knowledge of English. 

“Sure!” exclaimed Jimmy, “any fighting man 
knows what a gun is! You lie there, Fritzie — 
for you’re done for — you and your little ma- 
chine.” 

He crept back and cautiously waved a hand 
out to the watchful Perkins at the bend of the 
traverse. Perkins waved joyously back. 

“All right!” yelled Jimmy, “I got the rabbit! 
Now you fellows can go back along that forward 
section and tell Lieutenant Miller that it’s 
cleaned up. And get the wounded back, too. 
Perky, if they can go. I’m all right here with 
Fritzie; and it’s healthier inside than out!” 

For twenty minutes Corporal May sat cross- 
legged, watching a silent, sweating German lad 
who shook his head at every question. The 
trench out ahead of the machine-gun was full of 
Sammies now. They barricaded the traverse 
head and dug through from their own side 
until they uncovered the concrete shield and then 
into the shelter where Jimmv and his prisoner 
sat. 


182 


He stood straight up in the shelter behind his enemy 
and suddenly dropped on him .... 









BR ER FRITZIE 


Lieutenant Miller inspected them both when 
they limped through among the close-packed 
men of the third platoon. 

“I must remark. Corporal May,” he began, 
“that you went a little further than orders were 
meant for. J ust a little bit further than the rest 
of ’em! But it’s all right, for we’re holding 
the line, sir — first and second, too! Otherwise 
you’d been in bad !” 

“Had to take a chance, sir. The company 
would have been cut up bad trying to come along 
after us if we hadn’t got this fellow!” 

“We ? 33 grunted the sweating Perkins, respect- 
fully saluting his officer. “We — didn’t have a 
thing to do with it, sir. Corporal May got this 
B’rer Rabbit out of his hole — all on his own!” 

“Never mind,” retorted Corporal May, “let 
me do the talking!” 

“Eh?” queried the lieutenant, “it’ll have to be 
looked into — just now I wish we could go on 
after the second wave — but the orders were to 
stick here. And stick to orders, Corporal May 
— after this — unless you can turn a trick as good 
as this by going over ’em!” 

183 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


And the dirty, tired, bleeding men down in the 
captured trench, who looked more like sewer 
diggers now than neat American soldiers, 
laughed a bit and flopped down in the mud to 
smoke a bit and talk it over. 


CHAPTER VIII 


OUT O’ LUCK 

I T was the day before B Company received 
orders, along with the rest of the battalion, 
to prepare for the return to the front line 
trenches after its sojourn in the rest billets, that 
Corporal Jimmy May was conscious of a new 
and mysterious interest on the part of his com- 
rades in his doings. Although on rest, the fel- 
lows were kept busy enough with drills and 
setting-up exercises to keep them in the pink of 
physical condition, as well as constant practice 
in every new line of trench attack and defense. 
With all the preliminary training, and with the 
weeks on and off in the fighting lines of the 
Lorraine sector which had made them steady 
and precise veterans who had been under bom- 
bardment days at a time, and who had partici- 
pated in three successful attacks on the German 
positions, bearing their losses in killed and 
wounded with composure and iron resolution, 
185 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


the men of Company B found that the higher 
commands still considered there was a lot to learn 
for every rank and grade. Bomb and bayonet 
and rifle grenade work for every squad and pla- 
toon of the infantrymen went on unceasingly, 
along with the more specialized study of wire 
and trench attack; but with this there were real 
rest and recreation. As soon as the fellows were 
cleaned up, clothing and equipment overhauled 
and put in shape, nearly every company organ- 
ized a baseball nine, boxing bouts took place 
in the village streets; while others crowded to 
the ever welcoming “Y” stations to read, write 
and gossip about the events of their first battle 
experiences on the soil of France. When the 
two weeks’ rest period was up no one would have 
recognized the lusty, rollicking Sammies of 
B Company as the mud-caked, weary and nerve- 
racked soldiers who came out of the trenches 
after the taking of the bit of first line German 
defenses where Corporal May had alone rushed 
and captured the machine-gun dugout and so 
made way for the infantry to consolidate the sec- 
tion against the foe. 

Jimmy was hooking up his web belt blanket 
186 


OUT O’ LUCK 


roll-carrier before his barrack door when the top 
sergeant came along and then stopped watching 
the natty corporal. 

“If I was you, Jimmy,” grunted Milbank, “I’d 
put an extry shine on them tough-looking trench 
boots of yours this evenin’.” 

“Inspection?” answered Jimmy, though he 
knew it well enough. 

“Oh — everything! Regimental parade with 
full kit, after a good goin’ over of everything we 
got. Division staff all out too, Jimmy, for the 
review; and some French generals, so it’s all 
tidied up this outfit must be. And — ” the top 
sergeant looked solemnly at Jimmy — “ain’t any- 
body said anything to you?” 

“Me? What are you talking about? I been 
too busy to listen anyhow — but I hear the bat- 
talion’s going to a new sector.” 

“G’wan!” grunted Milbank, “that wasn’t what 
I meant!” 

And he strode on, leaving Corporal Jimmy 
mystified enough. 

When the first call for Assembly sounded 
Jimmy was in his place — fourth man in the 
front rank of his squad, and looking them over. 
187 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


Every man of the eight was clean and soldierly, 
and there was that curious buzz of interest and 
craning of necks down the company front that 
Corporal May had noted at drill — looking at him, 
too, and grinning. Even when the double rank 
snapped to attention Jimmy felt it; and then, 
by platoons the regiment swung off to the evo- 
lutions before the review of the brigade. 

And after awhile the infantry regiment was 
drawn up in line, conscious that it had marched 
at its best past the reviewing general officers; 
and now stood at rest for a moment. Down 
along the company front of B strode its alert 
captain glancing searchingly at the front rank. 
Then he spoke to the platoon leader, and Lieu- 
tenant Miller also turned and watched the line. 
They smiled; and then came the shout of an 
order from the mounted battalion commander. 

“Attention !” roared the lieutenant, and like 
a swiftly coordinating machine, B Company 
jerked up to precise formation. Corporal May’s 
eyes were rigidly front like the others; he was 
just aware that a group of officers were coming 
from the left; his colonel, and the adjutant, and 
an unknown American general; and then two 
188 


OUT O’ LUCK 


bearded, smiling officers in the horizon blue of 
the French army, bronzed, sturdy men whose 
bosoms were covered with decorations. There 
had been a calling of a name or two from the 
other battalion on B Company’s left, and now, 
as the officer group reached its front, the adju- 
tant stopped, glanced at a paper in his hand and 
said sharply: 

“Corporal James May!” 

Corporal Jimmy relaxed his rigid pose just 
an instant in surprise, but too surprised to 
answer; he hadn’t been particularly acquainted 
with regimental staff officers. Then his senior 
captain repeated the call, and seemed to grin 
interestedly. 

“Yes, sir!” answered Jimmy. “Here, sir!” 

“Ten paces to the front, sir,” said Lieutenant 
Miller, and Jimmy strode forward, stopped, gave 
the rifle salute, but looked neither to left nor 
right. He found himself in a thin line of other 
Sammies, a half dozen in all, who had been called 
out before the reviewing group which had saun- 
tered informally along the front. He shot a 
nervous glance to his left ; the silence in the ranks 
behind w r as suddenly oppressive, and Jimmy’s 
189 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


heart was beating almost audibly, he thought. 
What was it all about anyhow? Then out the 
corner of his eye he saw the smiling, bearded 
French officer pinning something to the coat of 
a terribly embarrassed sergeant of C Company, 
and then stopping before a lanky Tennessee 
private next to Corporal May himself. 

Lieutenant Miller, just in front of Jimmy, 
muttered something and stepped back : 

“It’s one on you, Corporal. The company 
just kept it away from you for a surprise party! 
I congratulate you, sir!” 

Jimmy gasped. Fie had to turn his head 
again to stare. The French general with the 
tunic covered with decorations, was before him 
now. 

“Attention!” whispered Lieutenant Miller. 
For the whole group of American and French 
officers had turned their attention to Corporal 
May now. The colonel was whispering smilingly 
to the general of division. Then the French 
general was speaking; he essayed a few words 
of English, and then went on rapidly, fervently, 
in his own tongue of which Corporal May knew 
hardly a syllable. But he had no need. The 
190 


OUT O’ LUCK 


gallant Frenchman was lifting a bronzed cross 
pendant from a green and red-striped ribbon to 
pin it against Jimmy May’s khaki coat. Then 
he grasped Jimmy’s hand, shook it vigorously 
— and bent over to kiss Corporal May’s bronzed, 
and now embarrassed, cheek. He patted Jim- 
my’s shoulder and went on: 

“Le brave Americain! Je vous salue au nom 
de France !” 

And more, with another hearty handshake, to 
which Jimmy stammered and said: “Yes, sir! 
Thank you, sir!” 

For, glancing down at his jacket, he saw there 
the Croioc de Guerre! The honored decoration 
of the French Republic with the added bronze 
palm across the red and green ribbon! 

Jimmy hung to his rifle in a rather unsteady 
“present arms.” He knew the group of Ameri- 
can officers from the general of division down 
to his beloved platoon lieutenant were regarding 
him smilingly. He didn’t know what else to say 
or do, and the French commander was passing 
him to the other envied Sammy on his right, when 
Lieutenant Miller pulled at Jimmy’s sleeve. 

“Salute! Salute!” he whispered. “He said all 
191 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


sorts of especially nice things of you, sir — your 
last bit of work in capturing the machine-gun 
single-handed !” 

“Yes, sir!” responded Jimmy, and he came up 
to shoulder arms and gave the rifle salute as the 
best he could think of. The great French gen- 
eral seemed to understand, for he turned and 
saluted Jimmy again, gravely smiling. Then he 
passed on. Jimmy heard something like a mut- 
tered laugh from his own officers — a kindly and 
appreciative one, too; and a movement behind 
him, and then all B Company broke into a mighty 
cheer. One long American yell it was, which 
the Senior Captain allowed and then checked 
with a grin; for Jimmy was the only represen- 
tative of the company who had won this merited 
distinction in the field. 

“That will do, sir!” murmured Lieutenant Mil- 
ler, “it’ll do for a lot of things in your record. 
Corporal, that we’ve known of. You won’t be 
allowed to wear the cross of war just yet, but 
sometime — maybe . . . anyhow, the regiment is 
proud of you, sir! Return to your place!” 

“Yes, sir! Thank you, sir!” gasped Jimmy, 
for this was more to fluster the corporal than 
192 


OUT O’ LUCK 


bombing a Boche dngout. He saluted and did a 
nervous right-about to step in the vacant place of 
his squad. They did not move a muscle but 
every man of them looked as if only the iron dis- 
cipline of the ranks kept him from personally 
handing Jimmy May the “ragging” of his glad 
young life. Not that a man envied or begrudged 
Jimmy his distinction, but they just wanted to 
show him how democratically they felt towards 
a distinguished service guy. 

Then it was a command down the line, and 
Jimmy found himself barking out: “Squad 
right!” and it was a grand relief to feel the old 
company wheeling away into column as natural 
as life, only Jimmy couldn’t help glancing down, 
now and then, at that bit of bronze and ribbon 
on his breast. He felt suddenly that this was 
the greatest thing ever; the heroic nation of 
France in arms had honored him for his bit in 
returning the debt that America owed for the 
gallant deeds of Lafayette and his compatriots in 
the struggle for liberty of Jimmy’s own coun- 
try; and this was better than promotion or 
praise. 

B Company turned “column left” down the 
193 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


dusty little street where the battalion was quar- 
tered, half in some ancient stone houses of a way- 
side village, and half in wooden barracks erected 
in the tiny square; and it was not until the top 
sergeant had dismissed them after the customary 
inspection and “port arms” that the fellows got 
their chance at Jimmy May. Then they gave a 
yell and clustered about, bumping into him with 
arms and accouterments, sunburned, friendly 
faces close to his as they dutifully took up their 
jeering comments: 

“Hi, Corporal — they give you the cross of war 
all on account o’ bein’ so fussy over yer squad’s 
mess tins, wasn’t it?” 

“Naw, it was because Jimmy gave a lieutenant- 
colonel of the general staff such a bawlin’-out 
for tryin’ to cross his guard line when we were 
tryin’ to clean up that mess after the Boche air- 
planes bombed the engineers’ camp.” 

Jimmy May smiled, as usual, when he had 
nothing to say. He felt as happy over the full 
accord among his comrades that he had won his 
honors fairly as he did over the decoration it- 
self. 

Even his gray-mustached old top sergeant 
194 


OUT O’ LUCK 


who had been his first drill-master away back 
in the days before the Mexican service, and who 
Jimmy felt was entitled to a hatful of medals 
for his twenty years’ faithful grind in the army, 
looked on the “kid corporal” of B Company with 
ungrudging eye. Milbank came to him in the 
dusk, joshed him sarcastically about his cross of 
war, and then blurted out: 

“Jimmy, I s’pose you know we’re goin’ up to 
the big front to-morrow?” 

“Yes?” muttered Jimmy. “Say, I’m glad for 
the big stuff!” 

“Somewhere up there. Troop trains are 
cornin’ into the sidin’ to-night. And the company 
officers looked over all the corporals, and then 
left it to me.” 

“Eh?” said Jimmy, sharply. “Don’t say 
they’ll pull me out of the line for any special 
duty! I did my share of that!” 

“Goin’ to pull you out of the line all right! 
But you’ll be along with the gang. I recom- 
mended you for the vacant sergeantcy.” 

“Milbank!” gasped Jimmy, for he thought the 
old top sergeant might be envious of his luck 
if any one would. Then he rubbed his chin — 
195 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 

he had twice turned down the chance to be a ser- 
geant when the senior captain had mentioned it. 
But now — well, he felt he never would refuse 
anything to Milbank. He had won his way at 
last into the heart of the gruff old Western cam- 
paigner. 

“Now, don’t say you’ll kick about it, kid!” 
growled Milbank. “For we’ll make you take it! 
I just want ’em to see how I stand — that nothing 
goes wdth me in this company except the lad 
who can put over the work — and so, if I hated 
you worse than a Hun, I’d still recommend you 
— get that?” 

“You bet I do!” Jimmy jumped out and 
grabbed Milbank’s big, hard hand. “I’d rather 
have this from you. Sergeant, than the division 
commander — you understand?” 

“G’wan, kid!” growled Milbank. “Maybe I’ll 
never speak civil to you again. You go to the 
quartermaster and draw your chevrons, that’s all, 
and I guess they’ll give you the fourth section 
to-morrow. But first they’re goin’ to put us up 
in the first line for just twelve hours, I hear, to 
relieve a bunch that got cut up a bit to-day. 
Then it’s the troop train for us, I reckon.” 

196 


OUT O’ LUCK 


“Glad to hear it! My squad’s ready — and 
it’ll be the last little brush I’ll have with ’em.” 

Jimmy turned back whistling softly, feeling up 
to that precious Croix de Guerre safe in his breast 
pocket. He wouldn’t have worn it before the 
buckies for worlds, just as he felt bashful about 
announcing that he was to be a sergeant. The 
gang would have to find it out, that was all ! At 
nine o’clock, when the battalion went splashing 
off in the dark on a muddy road that led them, 
after two hours, into the first communicating 
trenches, he was still the happiest soldier in 
France. This was his big day all right. 

In the communications the company sections 
slid out into files to follow silently through the 
dark to their first line stations. Presently it was 
slip, stagger, sink on the loose “duckboards” in 
the trenches. Some were afloat in slimy mud, 
some had their slats broken, and, now and then, 
a mutter came from some heavily-laden bucky 
who jammed the heel of his trench boot between 
these slats and held up the whole line until he 
twisted free. Jimmy led his weary squad on past 
traverse after traverse, rest stations and dug- 
outs, until finally it was halted, and the fellows 
197 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


lay back against damp clay to allow the other 
Sammies who had held the firing posts to slip 
past them on their way out. They were up close 
to the German lines here, and not a word could 
be spoken, however great the curiosity of the 
newcomers as to what the relieved troops knew. 

Finally Lieutenant Miller, ahead of Jimmy’s 
file, waved a hand which Jimmy saw first in the 
reflected starlight on the water in the trench, 
and with his eight men he slid onward. 

“Don’t kick up that slush,” he whispered back 
to Perky, “we must be on a ticklish line to have 
all this caution. Not a word, there, fellows!” 

For, as always, the individual men of the 
squad, even when they crept up to the firing step, 
and laid across the boards around the feet of the 
silent look-outs standing to the rifles in the sand- 
bag parapet — had not the remotest idea of where 
they were, or what was up. It was just a deep, 
wet trench, dark and ill-smelling, with the silent 
stars over the top. The artillery fire was distant 
here, but the fellows knew that everything was 
primed and ready on both sides for expected 
raids, and the least suspicion would light up the 
whole terrain outside with star bombs and flares 
198 


OUT O’ LUCK 


and bring a hail of machine-gun fire. They were 
trained trench fighters now, and the Boche would 
never shake their nerves by any trick. 

Lieutenant Miller crept up with the whispered 
instructions to Corporal May, and then disap- 
peared out of the short fire trench. Jimmy crept 
to|two of his squad and ordered them to crawl 
up j in the lookout embrasures between the sacks. 
The rest of the tired fellows could crouch around 
below and sleep until relief or an alarm. Dawn 
was coming when the final disposition was made ; 
then Jimmy, himself, got a chance to drowse off a 
few moments. 

He awoke with a start when Rube Tolliver 
nudged him. Staring up, he saw the red sun’s 
rays level across the trench top. The gray muddy 
figures of his comrades were sprawled still sleep- 
ing about the feet of the two lookouts. But Tol- 
liver, one of these, had stepped down from the 
bags, to kick his corporal gently on the neck. 

“Somethin’ doin’, Jimmy — over the top!” 
whispered Rube, “I can see their line now, for 
it’s light enough to use the periscope, but I took 
a chance without it. Saw somethin’ shiny back 
of their wires.” 


199 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


Jimmy was on his feet without a word. This 
little fire trench was the most advanced of a blunt 
salient and nearest to the German wires, and be- 
ing on a trifle higher ground he could overlook 
the lifeless, cloddy stretch of No Man’s Land 
for some distance. Slowly Jimmy straightened 
up in the sentry’s station between the bags. He 
trie 1 the periscope first, but the night’s dew 
blurrea the top glass where it was hidden in the 
sacks. Then he swung higher, cautiously nestling 
his dirt-covered steel helmet among the sandbags. 
He edged his chin up until he could see into the 
enemy’s wires. Here and there he just made out 
the irregular trenches and bags. A gentle wind 
touched his face. Then his keen eye picked up 
what Tolliver had noted. The level sun shone 
on some dull metallic thing. Further down the 
German line he saw another. 

Then Corporal May dodged back, gasping. 
He knew! — and it was something Company B 
had not yet faced! The dreaded gas of the Ger- 
mans ! The level sunrays were striking their pro- 
jectors as they stealthily uncovered them over the 
parapets — it was to be a silent gas attack, the 
200 


OUT O’ LUCK 


wind just right to carry the death-dealing stuff 
into the Sammies’ lines ! 

Jimmy whirled about upon Tolliver. “Back 
with you! Inform Lieutenant Miller — just 
around the first traverse at the trench phone! 
It’s coming all along the line here, sure as any- 
thing!” 

The tall soldier floundered out. By this time 
the squad had been kicked and warned to awak- 
ening. Up they scrambled, red-eyed, bewildered, 
grasping rifles as they swung to their feet. 

“Gas attack!” muttered Jimmy, “masks — posi- 
tion — there, all of you !” 

There was a grumble, a gasp, and, well-trained 
to just this emergency, every man swung his 
ready mask up from its case, and then waited 
while the Corporal took another peep. Already, 
down the hidden fire trenches, and back in the 
others, too, a buzz of orders and stealthy com- 
ments had come. The section commanders were 
ordering every man to readiness for the dreaded 
ordeal. Milbank came floundering into Jimmy’s 
squad with a glance about. Every man was up, 
mask at position, alert. The grim sergeant ap- 
proved, and disappeared. It was up to Jimmy 
201 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


to judge the creep of that deadly green haze 
which already he could mark drifting on from the 
Boche line. From each of the German chlorine 
tanks down their trenches the gas was thicker 
until it became a green cloud, streaked with 
brown, and rolling on unevenly, swirling, filling 
shell holes, licking out tongues, here and there, 
where the fitful wind swept it. 

The silence was oppressive. The men below 
Jimmy’s station fidgeted nervously, staring up 
at their leader, waiting his word. It was worse 
than anything yet, that suspense — worse than 
barrages, or going over the top, or lying low 
under the machine-gun fire, this creeping, hor- 
rible death to every man that was caught by it. 
The first time for B Company, but Jimmy looked 
down to whistle nervously at the dogged forti- 
tude with which they trusted him and met it. 
Not a man would turn back without orders, he 
knew. Again he looked out. 

“Beady, there! Position! masks, all!” 

And with a hurried shuffle, eight masks went 
over eight bronzed faces under the steel hats. 
Then each man swung his rifle close, felt of the 
bayonet clasp, and waited. There would be an 
202 


OUT O’ LUCK 


infantry charge after the gas, they well knew, 
and the Boche must find a line of ready, un- 
scathed American lads eager to dash and meet 
them. Jimmy stared over again through his big 
goggles. Suddenly he seemed to taste the sweet- 
ish sickness of the stuff, and he jerked his mask 
lower and tighter. The gas wave had grown to 
a great, smoky wall now, hurried by the uncer- 
tain, rising morning wind. 

“Hope the wind comes big,” thought Jimmy, 
“it will spread this stuff thinner and higher. 
Anyhow they can’t charge until they’re sure its 
safe for ’em!” 

He saw by the uncertain movements of his 
squad that they, too, knew the deadly gas was 
on them, drifting over the top to fill the trench 
and wind on down the communications. Ser- 
geant Milbank came staggering back to the fire- 
trench. He motioned Jimmy to follow, and lead- 
ing his men, Corporal May did so. The ser- 
geant led them around a traverse to the left 
where the trenches were crowded with goggle- 
eyed monsters. The gas was not so bad here as 
in Jimmy’s advanced positioin. He saw that the 
battalion was massing in this trench presumably 
203 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


for a counter-attack. A moment more a quick, 
and tremendous barrage fire broke from the 
American artillery behind them laid upon the 
German lines to check and confuse the awaiting 
Huns. Jimmy crept up to the parapet. The 
gas cloud was dense over the firing pit he had 
left. Nearer it swept to where he was. But as 
he stared he seemed to feel a cooler wave on the 
back of his neck. His eyes were smarting, his 
mouth filling with water; he wondered desper- 
ately if his gas mask was intact. But he could 
do nothing now. The coolness on his left cheek 
was growing. Staring again at the gas wall, he 
suddenly choked a yell of joy. Then he did turn 
to bawl mufHedly into Lieutenant Miller’s ear. 

“It’s going back! Going back , and the wind’s 
changed!” 

His commander leaped higher on the parapet. 
He waved his hand to the senior officer. There 
were muffled shouts above the roar of the 75’s 
back at the artillery stations. Jimmy could see 
the white shrapnel puff s breaking over the Ger- 
man front lines. But best of all he saw the gas 
wave now blown and driven in irregular patches, 
204 


OUT O’ LUCK 


spreading back past the German wires upon the 
fellows who had ejected it. 

A puff of sweet, clean air touched his face as 
he accidentally knocked his mask up a bit. The 
next minute he jerked it off with a yell. 

“It’s on ’em ! It’s got ’em ! Hear ’em yell over 
there!” 

The Sammies could hear the confusion in the 
Boche trenches. Suddenly the officers came hur- 
rying in among the crowded men. Lieutenant 
Miller had his own mask off and was waving it. 

“Ready, there ! Masks off, Sergeant! Steady 
all along, now. In a minute you’re going to fol- 
low — dash for those shell-holes just inside their 
wires, and hold ’em for the big attack! They 
daren’t leave their own holes now!” 

The next minute there came a short whistle, 
and the lieutenant went to the parapet top. Jim- 
my May, with a yell to the men behind him, fol- 
lowed; and all along the line the Sammies poured 
out and ran heavily for the great shell-holes. The 
Germans opposite them were unable to fire a shot, 
so great was the confusion when the gas blew 
back on their lines. Then came a rattle of ma- 
chine-gun volleys further down the wires. But 
205 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


the Sammies opposite this sector deluged the ma- 
chine-gun nests with rifle fire. Floundering on 
in the irregular line Jimmy met the German 
wires, ducked and sidestepped, found the narrow 
openings and was through in a mob of cheering 
Sammies. Ten yards beyond he flung himself 
into a great crater with nine other doughboys. 
The others of the raiding battalion had found 
shelter equally close to the German line. But 
none dared go further now. The treacherous gas 
was in the Boche trenches and would get friend 
and foe alike. In the shell crater the air was 
good, for it had been to the left of the main gas 
deluge and had got little of it. So here, the per- 
spiring, eager Sammies clung to the clods and lis- 
tened to the bombardment swing over their heads 
on the German rear trenches. They were too 
close to the German lines for the American guns 
to work there now. But an airplane swung low 
over their heads along the Boche trench, its ma- 
chine-gun rattling down upon the defenders. 
Then came another intrepid airman, and another, 
swinging safely above the gas. 

“Bet those Huns’ll study the weather before 
they shoot over another bunch of chlorine !” sang 
206 


OUT O’ LUCK 


out Perkins, grinning out of the mud at Cor- 
poral May. “First time for B Company, and I 
guess we stood the racket! Hello, there’s the 
whistle! I guess over we go again!” 

Perky started to rise, then fell headlong over 
the clods. Jimmy leaped up to see what the sec- 
tion leader’s whistle was. Then he sank back, 
waving his arm. 

“Position, there ! Masks — the wind’s swinging 
the stuff, and a new projector’s uncovered! 
Steady, there — masks, boys!” 

For they saw the hideous greenish-brown cloud 
shoot up directly opposite them now. And the 
rising wind swung this new attack so they could 
not escape it. But Jimmy glanced confidently 
back ; every man would be ready to game it out. 
Then he heard a groan. 

“Perky!” whispered Jimmy, and crawled near 
his old comrade. 

Blood was seeping down Perky’s elbow, but 
Perky was not minding that. 

“A sniper winged me a bit,” groaned Perkins, 
“but Jimmy — my mask! Smashed it when I fell 
— and the stuff’s cornin’ ! O, I don’t want to die 
that way, Jimmy!” 


207 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


Jimmy gave one look at Perky’s white face. 
It was too true. Another moment and he would 
die floundering in the crater with his comrades 
helpless to aid. Then Jimmy started up swiftly. 

He tore off his belt and pack carrier, and then 
his coat. 

“Wrap this over your head, Perky, and make 
a try for it — back!” 

The stocky little soldier staggered up. The 
snipers were cutting the whole space from both 
sides, and Perky seemed bewildered. Jimmy 
groaned himself, for his old bunky was flounder- 
ing in a circle. 

“He’s crazy!” muttered Jimmy. Some one 
came crawling into his shell-hole. He looked 
about to see Lieutenant Miller. The young of- 
ficer raised his mask a moment, for the gas was 
not yet on them. 

“I know what you want, Corporal,” he mut- 
tered. “Against orders to help any wounded 
man back while action is on, but — if you want to 
take the chance . . . your old bunky, eh?” 

Jimmy needed no more. Up he dashed and 
back, reaching Perky half-way on the bullet- 
swept open. Grasping the bewildered man by 
208 


OUT O’ LUCK 


the unwounded arm, he dragged and pushed, 
while the spiteful z-z-zing-zing — swept around 
them. Then a yell went up as the two reached 
the sandbags — a half-dozen Sammies reached to 
drag them to shelter. 

Jimmy fell flat on his back in the mud. When 
he sat up, his old top sergeant was fanning clean, 
good air in his face. Perkins had been hustled 
back to the first-aid dugout, and to be refitted 
with a mask. The little trouble was over out in 
front. The discomfited Huns had been com- 
pelled to give up five hundred yards of their own 
first line and the victorious Sammies were in it, 
cautiously cleaning it up, as the gas drove away 
on the wind. 

But Corporal May sat on the muddy duck- 
boards disconsolately rummaging in his khaki 
coat. “Now, what you think, Sergeant?’’ he 
yelled, “I lost my cross of war the very first day 
I had it!” 

“Yer out o’ luck, kid,” grunted Milbank, “out 
o’ luck, as they say in the Army! But to-night 
we’ll make a crawl-patrol to find it — all B Com- 
pany would volunteer to go fetch that trinket 
back f’r you!” 


209 


CHAPTER IX 


THE ROAD TO BERLIN 


ND Top Sergeant Milbank made good on 



that declaration. He laid the matter be- 
fore the company officers who knew well enough 
that every bucky in the outfit considered Jimmy’s 
cross of war an honor to the whole organization. 
It didn’t need Eddie Perkins’ description of the 
manner in which Jimmy had dragged him away 
from the gas attack to send fifty volunteers out 
for the lost Croix de Guerre. The expedition fell 
in with the plans to send over reconnoitering 
patrols the coming night to see if the Germans 
had come back to their captured first-line 
trenches, which the Sammies, themselves, had 
abandoned after destroying everything of value 
in a military way. 

Corporal May had not yet been assigned to a 
sergeant’s duties, though he had his chevrons of 
the rank across his olive drab arms. So it was 
still as Corporal Jimmy that he led out his squad 


210 


THE ROAD TO BERLIN 


this night before the moon arose. Sergeant Mil- 
bank went over the top with twenty men down 
the line ; and the patrols were instructed to spread 
out beyond the German wires and then push on 
their best scouts here and there to see if the 
Boches had returned. 

But Jimmy had permission first to set his squad 
at a hand-and-knee search along the line of re- 
treat he had come with the wounded Perky, to 
find his decoration. He had studied the spot 
carefully before dark, so that the eight men, 
when the first faint glow of the moon came in the 
east, could work along his path. They were given 
fifteen minutes to retrieve Jimmy’s lost cross of 
war, and after that must be on to join Milbank’s 
patrol beyond the wires. As there was little like- 
lihood of the Boches having come back to their 
own front line, where the Sammies had routed 
them after their disastrous gas maneuver, cau- 
tion was a bit relaxed. But Jimmy, sitting on 
the edge of the big shell crater, looking at his 
luminous watch dial, disconsolately knew that 
he had not found his decoration, and time was 
up. He waited until the squad had come silently 
211 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


in, one by one, and then muttered his instruc- 
tions. 

And then, suddenly, his big, lanky bomb- 
thrower, Rube Tolliver, swept an arm around 
Jimmy’s neck and flopped something up against 
his gas mask carrier. 

“Right-O! Jimmy — rubbed my nose right 
onto it just where you give Perky that last boost 
when he fell! B Company’s in luck again!” 

Jimmy grasped his precious bit of bronze and 
ribbon ; then his old bunky’s hand. The dark fig- 
ures shuffled about in the shell crater, muttering 
stealthily — they had been more intent on finding 
the lost Croix de Guerre than winning a battle, 
so it was with jubilant, friendly whispers that 
the squad strung out, column-file, after the cor- 
poral on his way through the first wires. As for 
Jimmy, he chucked the trinket down in his flan- 
nel shirt pocket this time, resolved that he would 
turn it into the regimental adjutant’s hands for 
safe keeping as soon as he could. 

He turned his face out to No Man’s Land con- 
fidently — a blackened indistinguishable face, like 
all the others, for the night patrol must show no 
light-colored object out there where a German 
212 


THE ROAD TO BERLIN 


star bomb might show up the whole terrain in 
vivid white light any instant. The squad went 
on silently, and picked up one of Milbank’s out- 
posts presently. The sergeant, himself, had gone 
into the abandoned German trenches two hun- 
dred yards to the left, the scout said, and the 
whole outfit was to follow, pass this and go on 
to form a trap for any wandering Boche patrol 
that ventured back. 

Sergeant Milbank and Corporal May lay out 
over the disordered German parapet and whis- 
pered. Other American patrols would be out, 
left and right, and they must form contact so 
that no disastrous mistake occurred if the hostile 
groups were suspected. 

“Better take the extreme right of your line 
yourself,” murmured Milbank, “and keep the 
gang a bit behind, for you’re the best scout of 
’em, Jimmy. You’ll find a communication run- 
nin’ back, and you better work it close and slow. 
If they send out workin’ parties they’ll follow 
that ditch. First sign of anything, you beat it 
back, and we’ll lay for ’em. And don’t start 
nothin’! Our guns are ordered to lay off this 
line, and let us doughboys do it all to-night.” 

213 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


Jimmy nodded. The patrol was out for pris- 
oners to-night, for the intelligence department 
wanted to know just what troops were opposing 
the Sammies here; whether the crack Bavarian 
corps, which the Americans had driven back once, 
was now withdrawn to help in the big German 
smash to the westward on the way to Paris. 

“Bring in some live ones!” whispered Jimmy 
to Tolliver, when the squad was again away, 
slowly and silently paralleling the captured Ger- 
man trench until the Corporal, in the lead, made 
out the dim, irregular line leading back which 
he knew to be the communication ditch. “All 
right now — and if we can jump a lone patrol and 
take him without a sound, it’ll be just the ticket! 
Indian stuff, Rube!” 

They raised their heads to watch over the fire 
trench. 

The silence was uncanny. The black earth 
everywhere, the stars twinkling sleepily, and the 
faint glow of the moon just showing the bulk of 
the Champagne hills off to the right and behind 
the enemy’s positions. A gun grumbled far away 
behind that ridge and now and then a blotch of 
distant white light showed where a flare had 
214 


THE ROAD TO BERLIN 


burst as some sector of the foeman grew uneasy. 
But all along the half mile of battleground, 
which the battalion had won to-day, absolute si- 
lence. 

Jimmy wormed over the sandbags, dropped to 
the trench bottom, found a hand hold and climbed 
up. From this point the communication trench 
was as empty as the first line ditch. He saw a 
battered helmet, a little further on a machine- 
gun wrecked and buried in dirt, scattered clothes 
and broken boarding where the American guns 
had mauled the works. Every twenty feet along 
the communication way, Jimmy stationed one of 
his patrol ; then he and Tolliver took the advance. 
They would creep on now, inch by inch, hardly 
breathing, until they had established silent con- 
tact with the foe. They must discover just how 
much of the back area the Boches had aban- 
doned, before a combat patrol could make that 
stealthy raid for the desired prisoners. They 
must find the enemy but not be found; an alarm 
would expose the whole series of squad patrols up 
and down the front to the deadly machine-guns 
under the lighting star bombs. It had to be 
215 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


“Indian stuff” as Jimmy said; search out the foe 
and escape back unseen and unheard. 

The maps had shown that the Boche’s second 
lines were two hundred yards back from the cap- 
tured front; and now Jimmy reflected that he 
must have come half that way along the com- 
munication. At the fourth traverse encountered, 
after he had wormed up to the bend on his stom- 
ach and stared long down the dark ditch, he felt 
uneasy that he heard or saw nothing. It was 
midnight and if the Boches had any intention of 
slipping back to repair their front line to-night 
they ought to be stirring. They knew that the 
Sammies had not tried to consolidate the lost 
position as yet, for it was a dangerous salient un- 
less the Americans took the adjoining higher 
ground where the machine guns were hidden. 

Big Bube Tolliver came elbowing alongside his 
corporal and whispered. Either the Germans 
had retreated much further back, or else they 
were going to come on the left where Milbank’s 
party would pick them up. If a shot was fired 
up there Jimmy’s squad was to get back hastily to 
the wires, and come in with the main section. 

But half an hour of waiting grew monoto- 
216 


THE ROAD TO BERLIN 


nous. Corporal Jimmy was afraid the distorted 
moon would struggle from behind the clouds and 
make it altogether too light for these two lone 
Sammies, or that some one of his squad strung 
back along the communication would get nervous 
and betray the patrol. The dark seemed to be 
peopled with mysterious and creeping enemies, 
even to Corporal May’s firm, sane imagination. 
Finally he turned and nudged Tolliver gently. 

“Let’s move on — we got to get a line on ’em, 
if we crawl all the way to the Rhine, Tolly! 
Follow me, but keep in touch with my foot.” 

The two scouts slipped on another hundred 
feet, stopping to listen, watch, every rod of it. 
Then on, warily to a bend of the trench, just be- 
yond which they made out a tremendous excava- 
tion where a huge high explosive shell had 
wrecked wall and dugout. But it was all silent, 
deserted. Jimmy wallowed over the crater edge, 
stumbled among splintered boards and torn, cor- 
rugated iron, then beckoned to his comrade. 

“Here’s a hole! Say, and it’s all quiet above. 
Let’s go under. We might want to use this pas- 
sage in the drive to-morrow. At least the guns 
217 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


will want to spot it, so’s to keep them from using 
it again/’ 

At the wrecked mouth of the narrow tunnel 
they listened. The air was fresh, but slightly 
acrid with old fumes driven in by the great shell 
undoubtedly. And down the three low steps and 
then along in the pitch dark hole Corporal Jimmy 
May stole noiseless as an Indian. 

He loosened his grenade bag and fixed one in 
his right hand, and slipped his left shoulder loose- 
ly through his rifle strap. If anything stirred 
ahead a hand bomb would be first, then a dash 
back. He thought once it would be better policy 
to leave Tolliver at the tunnel mouth, but then 
Jimmy rather felt like having a pal near in this 
mysterious underground excursion into enemy 
land. When he stopped, Tolliver stopped. They 
checked their breath, listened and stole on. Pres- 

f 

ently they found the path descending irregularly, 
and Jimmy could no longer touch the side wall. 
He didn’t discover this for some moments, and 
then he halted upright, rigid. This was danger- 
ous business now! They had nothing to guide 
their steps in what appeared to be a roomy cavern 
of the French hills. 


218 


THE ROAD TO BERLIN 


Jimmy backed into his comrade’s arms; stand- 
ing close together they whispered a startled con- 
ference. In Jimmy’s pocket was his flashlight 
but he feared to take a chance with it. They 
might be in an underground shelter for a thou- 
sand soldiers of the Kaiser. Still, Jimmy rea- 
soned, there would be some light or sound — not 
this absolute desertion. He stole a few yards 
further on the dry, firm bottom, then sat down 
to think it over. Tolly joined him and whis- 
pered : 

“About goin’ back, now — how we goin’ to find 
the tunnel in this big cave?” 

Jimmy was silent. They were taking a chance 
on that, especially if they started any sort of 
rumpus with an invisible enemy. And after a bit, 
watching in the pitch dark, he touched Tolly’s 
arm. 

“A lighter patch — to your left, see?” 

Tolliver touched him in turn for assent. They 
stared at a faint blur on the adjoining black. 
With a silent signal Jimmy arose and stole 
noiselessly on. Presently the blur lightened. 
Closer the two scouts moved. A wdiite bulk 
showed, and then they saw they were staring 
219 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


out a cavern entrance upon a distant moonlit 
slope across a valley of the Champagne hills. 
Reaching the bowlders about the hole, they 
crawled until they saw each way. They had 
come out behind the ridge which marked the main 
positions of the enemy here; a little valley shel- 
tered a few fires burning dimly far below them 
and to the left. 

Jimmy almost whistled his jubilance. They 
would have some report to make now ; something 
to mark down for the high-angle fire of the Amer- 
ican guns, for this surely would be a perfect as- 
sembling place for the Germans if they essayed 
a mass attack on the Sammies’ lines ! But scout- 
ing out the little cave entrance he concluded it 
was not used. The ground fell away steeply 
for some hundreds of feet down to a wooded 
creek. The German heavy guns could be all 
along there in these woods firing over the ridge 
and the airplanes would have a hard time spot- 
ting them. Corporal May began to make de- 
termined estimates of distance and declivity; he 
thought they had not come more than fifty feet 
down in the cave, nor more than two hundred 
yards from the outer side. The German second 
220 


THE ROAD TO BERLIN 


and third lines were surely right above him on 
the rocky ridge, and he and Tolly were way in- 
side their defenses. 

“I hope nothing starts up there,” he whis- 
pered, “we’d be in a fine fix if they drove our 
patrols back. The orders were for every one 
to be back at all events by three o’clock. Our 
guns will be beating ’em up at daylight.” 

“Sure,” muttered Tolliver, “but we don’t know 
yet how the Germans come into this cave, or what 
they use it for except to man their first lines — 
and they’ve quit that now. There’s another way 
in, Jimmy, besides this little lookout down here.” 

The rock wall bent to the right, so Jimmy sig- 
naled that they would scout that way. A glance 
at his concealed luminous watch showed that they 
had three hours more before the recall. They 
felt they could move faster now, for they were 
sure the cave was untenanted. 

Big Tolliver had taken the lead in this silent 
feel along the rocks, and suddenly Jimmy knew 
that he had stopped short, startled. Instantly 
he, too, grew rigid, his hand slipping again about 
a grenade in his case. If discovered they would 
hurl one bomb and dash back blindly for the other 
221 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 

exit. But Tolliver was whispering excitedly. 
Creeping a yard on, Jimmy put his hand to his 
comrade’s belt. Tolly took it and slipped Jim- 
my’s fingers on to touch something. And Cor- 
poral May thrilled at that touch. His hand was 
upon steel — smooth convex surfaces, coming to a 
point — then Jimmy felt the capless end of a shell 
— a big eight or ten-inch shell, at least ! He felt 
on and touched another, then another — the cavern 
floor was filled with them ! 

v The two venturing Sammies had come upon a 
hidden high explosive magazine of the German 
artillery which was so carefully camouflaged 
down in the belt of timber of the valley. 

“Whew!” breathed Jimmy, “of course there’s 
nobody home at this end, but somewhere beyond, 
where the ammunition supply gangs work, there 
will be all right!” 

He and Tolliver leaned over the close-packed 
park of big shells conferring, lip to ear, even as 
they listened. 

“Back for us,” whispered Tolliver, “there’ll be 
somebody guarding this stuff!” 

Jimmy was stealing along to the opening in 
the rocks. The moonlight was lighter now on the 
222 


THE ROAD TO BERLIN 


far slope, showing up the ravine more clearly. 
And to his right, as he peered among the bowl- 
ders, Corporal May saw what he had expected — 
a sort of traveled path with a chute that led down 
from this ridge. The German ammunition gangs 
entered the cave magazine some hundred yards 
to the right and with their shell trucks trundled 
the big steel boys down and off to the hidden gun 
positions. It was a capital magazine, safe from 
airplane bombs or any high-angle fire the Amer- 
icans could direct. 

“But where ?” breathed Jimmy, “and what are 
they doing now?” 

He crept on feeling down the line of big shells. 
There must have been thousands of them. Pres- 
ently he struck a stack of wooden cases, and then 
lumber — the place seemed to be a general store 
house of German war material. Suddenly Jim- 
my stumbled over a little steel track, floundered, 
crouched — and listened. No alarm came any- 
where. When Tolliver crept to him, he whis- 
pered and went on. Touching the little track 
rails with his foot he felt safe enough from fall- 
ing into any trap. The truck track certainly 
must lead to the main ammunition run where the 
223 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


shells were delivered down to the supply system 
along the wooded creek. Two hundred feet on, 
the track bent to the left, skirting the great park 
of projectiles. And here the two adventurers 
paused, watching a lighter patch beyond. 

“There’ll be a magazine guard there, sure,” 
whispered Jimmy, “but there’s no stuff being 
run out to-night. I reckon they’ve got troubles 
enough up above us fixing for us to attack again, 
or getting set for a drive of their own.” 

“I guess we discovered enough anyhow, Cor- 
poral!” muttered Tolliver. “If we counter-at- 
tacked and took this ridge, we’d capture all this 
stuff. But they’ll never allow that. Say — 
Oh! ” 

For the big bucky dropped instantly between 
two of the great shells, staring wildly at his cor- 
poral. Jimmy, too, was down. And well they 
did, for suddenly the whole track and the gray 
cavern liad flashed into dusky light. Over their 
very heads and back the way they had come a 
string of incandescent lamps lit everything ! 

Beyond, at the head of the ammunition slide 
they saw now the figures of half a dozen Ger- 
mans. They were getting up sleepily at a re- 
224 


THE ROAD TO BERLIN 

peated gruff order from a sergeant who had 
switched on the lights from the magazine en- 
trance ! A couple of fellows rattled a steel truck 
onto the track, and in another instant they were 
pushing it back towards the two Sammies. 

Jimmy signaled swiftly to his friend. It was 
no use to run down the track under the string of 
lights. They must squeeze into the big shell 
field and hide. Here and there there was room, 
but crawling among the big explosives with rifles, 
bomb bags and all their kits was difficult. Any 
noise, now, would be fatal. Jimmy stopped five 
yards from the track, wedged fast, knowing from 
the sound of the truck that now he must be silent 
as death. He heard a shuffle to his left. Tolliver 
also had lain flat among the giant shells. 

The groups with the truck came on, stopped 
thirty feet away and they heard the clanging of 
the little crane in the roof timbers that loaded 
the big shells on the truck. The Germans said 
hardly a word, but worked slowly like tired men 
just aroused to a monotonous task. 

“Funf!” growled the sergeant suddenly, “Das 
genugtr 

The crane was swung back, the little car began 
225 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 

to creak on with the squad shoving it. One sol- 
dier behind stopped suddenly, picked up some- 
thing at his feet and muttered : 

“Siehe!” 

The sergeant growled, then took, from the fel- 
low who was staring stupidly at it, a small, cor- 
rugated steel cone. Jimmy could just glimpse 
their caps and hands raised to the thing. The ser- 
geant gasped : it was one of Tolliver’s American 
hand grenades which had come from its case as he 
crawled into the shell park. 

“Halt an!” shouted the wnterofficier , and the 
truck stopped. 

They gathered about bursting into surprised 
talk. The sergeant roared and gesticulated, 
seeming to demand explanations. The Boches 
seemed to recognize the deadly token; they ar- 
gued excitedly, and now the officer ordered them 
from the truck and back into the cavern. 

They went on still talking and looking furtively 
beyond the ammunition park where the lights 
ended. When they had reached a safe distance, 
Jimmy May wriggled free and crept around the 
cylindrical shells until he could tug at Tolliver’s 
legging. 


226 


THE ROAD TO BERLIN 

“The first chance — back! There’ll be an in- 
vestigation now, when some officer gets this! 
But quiet, now — they won’t see us here!” 

True enough, presently the gang came back, 
the sergeant still growling puzzledly. Perhaps 
it was a captured hand bomb, but how did it 
come to be left in the magazine? The ammu- 
nition party was unarmed save for the sergeant’s 
pistol. But Jimmy thought desperately that, to 
get back in the cavern, he and Tolly must take 
the track — they could not crawl far among the 
close-packed shells; they had been lucky to find 
even a moment’s concealment. If the Germans 
stayed in the magazine, he and his comrade were 
done for. 

The truck was pushed slowly on. When Jim- 
my decided it had reached the mouth of the dump, 
he peered out on the track. There, as he feared, 
fifty feet away stood the unterofficier listening 
and puzzled. Another fellow beyond the car 
bawled out to the open. 

“Bad stuff!” thought Jimmy, and kicked Tol- 
liver’s leg. “Say, I think we better run for it.” 
Another look down the track and he knew they 
must; he saw the gleam of bayonets around the 
227 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


ammunition truck. Some guard detail had been 
summoned! 

“Wait!” whispered Jimmy, “the sergeant is 
turning to meet ’em! We mustn’t let ’em get 
any closer — it’s best now! Run straight out 
from the shells and maybe the light will show 
the tunnel we came in by! Only chance, Tolly! 
— once in the tunnel we can fight ’em maybe — 
bluff ’em back with a bomb and get back to the 
trenches!” 

Stealthily they slipped to their knees, crouch- 
ing by the line of shells; then, after one look 
back, Jimmy whispered: 

“Now, up — slow! Creep until they see us — - 
then run for it!” 

But Tolliver’s big crouched back had hardly 
arisen level with the shell tips, when a startled 
yell went up. Jimmy, in the lead, tore away. He 
heard Tolliver panting behind him. Shouts, or- 
ders, the clatter of feet followed. Reaching the 
bend of the track at the corner of the big shell 
park, Jimmy leaped over it and ran straight on 
in the unlighted portion of the cavern. It seemed 
the dusky wall over there showed the hole by 
which they had come. But suddenly a volley 
228 


THE ROAD TO BERLIN 

blazed down the tracks at them; the Germans 
could fire now with the far rocky wall for a bul- 
let-stop. 

But on the fugitives raced. Jimmy saw the 
tunnel end now joyously, but as he was slacken- 1 
ing speed to enter it, his heart seemed to stop. 
He saw the spiked helmet of a German officer 
slowly appear there. Behind him a file of men 
issuing. The leader dodged and shouted as the 
bullets from the other group richochetted on the 
rocks about them. In the dim light he failed to 
recognize the two Sammies who halted twenty 
paces away. Then, with a cry to his comrade, 
Corporal May dashed off to his left. Eighty 
feet that way he remembered the little unused 
opening out to the valley. That it merely took 
him down to the German lines he cared not. Out 
of that hole he must get and take a chance of 
escape. 

Among the bowlders at the entrance he col- 
lided violently with Tolliver. They staggered 
back, turned swiftly to face the yelling pursuers. 
Jimmy was fair outside the cave when he saw that 
his friend had stumbled, and not twenty feet be- 
yond, the first of the Boche party was already 
229 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 

raising his bayonet to down-stroke the fallen 
man. 

And back Jimmy started. Tolliver was on his 
feet now and dodging under Jimmy’s arm. 
There seemed dozens of excited Germans in the 
cavern, dark figures running here and there; 
farther back the dim incandescent s gleamed on 
wavering bayonet points. Jimmy took one look 
down the slope of the moonlit valley. If they had 
a half hour’s respite they might scramble up the 
slope outside and find some way to pass the Ger- 
man trenches back to their own patrols. It was 
a desperately slim chance, but the only one. But 
they had to check this close pursuit to have even 
that chance. 

So, clicking the time fuse on the grenade in 
his hand, Jimmy let it go fair in the narrow 
cavern mouth. He saw it went too high, sail- 
ing far over the heads of the charging enemies. 
But Tolliver let one go with better range and 
time. The next instant came the muffled explo- 
sions of both bombs in the cave — yells, screams 
and orders in under that swift back-puff of acrid 
smoke. 

Instantly Jimmy and Tolly sped away from 
230 


THE ROAD TO BERLIN 


the cave mouth, seeking not to descend the slope 
but to find a way up the rocky and tree-covered 
ridge. The moon was not high enough to light 
this side of the valley, and presently they went 
on slower, trying to pick a path. They had heard 
shouts down below, but not a Boche seemed to 
appear from the small cave entrance. The bombs 
must have driven the pursuers back in clean 
panic, if any of the leading groups had lived to 
do so. 

Jimmy had stopped a moment among the 
rocks, as Tolliver came to him. They were both 
gasping, unable to speak for a time. And sud- 
denly they heard an explosion somewhere — not 
loud but heavy and checked as if seeking space. 

“Say,” groaned Tolliver, “keep on — not up, 
but off to the right! Maybe we started some- 
thing . . . get off this ground, Jimmy, it’s no 
good place to be!” 

And they went staggering on, slightly up- 
ward but veering on to the right, and presently, 
Jimmy dropped into a shallow, well-beaten path 
easily traveled and leading towards the starlight 
on the ridge. 

“This leads to a communication, Tolly,” 
281 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


gasped the Corporal, “on, right up to their lines ! 
But I don’t care — I’m too — winded — to fight, 
or run!” 

“Let’s get off this trail,” grunted Tolliver, 
“and creep down in them rocks and get our 
nerve back again! But I reckon we’re goners, 
Jimmy! It’s over the Rhine for us, to some 
prison camp !” 

Jimmy staggered to a crevice, forty feet away 
from the path, and crawled out under some dusty 
weeds. From a gap in the ridge he could see 
the moon now, wavering and drawing up ; and he 
thought bitterly of the short way it was back to 
the Sammies’ line — just over this hill a bit. It 
was three o’clock — the patrol would be waiting 
impatiently for all the scouts to come in. 

Captured! Jimmy ground his teeth together; 
no, he’d rather die up here, fighting a Boche bat- 
talion ! Down in his flannel shirt pocket, wet with 
sweat, he felt the Croix de Guerre — it should 
never go to the Kaiser as a war trophy, never ! 

“Listen,” grunted Tolliver, weakly, “there’s a 
racket down there — and a fire, too.” 

They could see the dim reflection of some glow 
in the deep, narrow valley. It flickered on the 
232 


THE ROAD TO BERLIN 


trees, and roads ; and they saw men moving, and 
could hear faint cries. And then on this paltry 
activity, there came a sudden, jarring shock — 
the rocks reeled and heaved under them, and then 
the most diabolical roar three hundred yards to 1 
their left they had ever dreamed of. Up over the 
intervening trees and bowlders through the moon- 
light, went an enormous white, gray and black 
twisting cloud. They heard a series of muffled 
explosions one after the other, tearing shatter- 
ing sounds under that pall of dirt and smoke that 
spread far over the little valley. Then the 
scream and whistle of flying rocks and fragments 
above them, hailing down over all the ridge. 

After that there was comparative silence, save 
for that dull and continued series of explosions 
under the earth apparently. But nothing like 
that first terrific crater burst. 

Tolliver sat up and dusted his khakis. He 
looked solemnly back to a dim, murky glow in the 
valley which showed now and then through eddy- 
ing smoke wreaths. 

“Something started, Jimmy! I guess we 
messed up a little fire that got into something 
233 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


before those boys could put it out. We blew 
up that whole hillside, Jimmy!” 

“It was worth the hike,” muttered Jimmy, 
“but that don’t say how we’re going to get back. 
Captured, Tolly! — a prisoner in Germany! I 
won’t stand for it!” 

Jimmy got up wrathfully and dusted off his 
clothes. Then the two soldiers stood staring up 
the moonlight way to the ridge. They heard 
voices, there — German voices, coming back along 
the trail, officers passing rapidly down from the 
trenches on the hilltop. 

“Good night,” murmured Tolliver, after them, 
“the Boches are all around us, Corporal — you got 
to think quick now !” 

Jimmy May was too tired to think. He sat 
down staring wistfully at the moon. Same old 
friendly moon that would shine on the distant 
shores of America in a few hours — but where 
would he be? 


CHAPTER X 


CAMOUFLAGE FOR TWO 

TT don’t look good,” muttered Rube Tolliver, 
*** gloomily, staring off at the pink glow of 
dawn in the east. 4 ‘We can’t keep on goin’ over 
the hill, Jimmy. The Roches are thick there — 
thick as bees. If we were goin’ to try and slip 
through their lines we ought to have pulled it 
before daylight.” 

“Wasn’t a show with that section of ’em com- 
ing back from their second line and flopping 
down for a rest all along among the trees. But I 
guess we waited too long anyhow.” 

Corporal May sat up, hungry and hollow-eyed. 
He could see the round capped, clumsily dressed 
Bavarians not a hundred feet away from their 
hiding place. A little wheeled kitchen had been 
dragged from some point along the hill and 
stopped under the oak trees, and already the 
Boches had gathered about it. The smells of the 
breakfast came to the hungry Sammies’ nostrils. 

235 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


Rube Tolliver lay back again in the rock crevice 
and chewed a weed. 

“I suppose,” grumbled Jimmy, disconsolately, 
“we ought to get up and walk down to those fel- 
lows with our hands up. Ain’t a show! And if 
they knew we were the fellows who blew up the 
magazine, they’d shoot us anyhow.” 

“All depends on what kind of officer we bump 
into. Wouldn’t trust ’em! And say, there goes 
the little mornin’ howdy off to our left. Lucky 
though that our guns can’t possibly drop a shell 
along the under side of this hill. It’s certainly 
a grand position for the Fritzies to snug up 
under.” 

Even as the two lone Sammies grumbled an 
American shell came rising over the front ridge in 
a beautiful white arc above their heads and burst 
behind the wooded belt in the valley behind 
them. They could hear the heavy slam of the 
big guns far off to their left, both German and 
American, but the camouflaged batteries imme- 
diately in their rear were silent. Down in the 
little valley under the drifting morning mists and 
the smoke still left from the magazine explosion, 
236 


CAMOUFLAGE FOR TWO 

Jimmy and Rube could see the tiny figures of 
men. Streams of them went along the creek 
road and disappeared under the bulge of the 
hill. 

“I guess they got a lot of mess to clean up/’ 
said Jimmy, “and maybe we disorganized their 
whole ammunition train system by that bust-up, 
— it was grand while it lasted!” 

“I reckon it was worth it — but it’s tough on 
you and me. We’ll see the rest of this yere war 
from behind some barbed wire fence over the 
Rhine, Jimmy, — that’s what hurts.” 

So the two listened gloomily to the rising rum- 
ble of the guns. Nothing short of a successful 
infantry attack by the Sammies on the defenses 
along this ridge would get them free. And they 
knew the second and third lines up there were 
too strong for any immediate capture. The two 
Americans could not move without being seen 
by the Bodies, dozens of whom had already 
passed each way by the path near which Jimmy 
and Rube lay in the weeds and rocks. 

Jimmy argued and argued in his mind. With 
his rifle and service pistol and two hundred 
rounds of ammunition he hated to surrender; yet 
237 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 

if he didn’t he and Rube would face hundreds of 
foes at the first move. 

“Rotten!” he growled, “this was one thing I 
never did dream of !” 

He was unlacing his legging and pulling off 
a shoe. Rube watched his corporal dismally. 

“What’s up, Jimmy?” 

“My cross of war. Best bet is to stick it in 
my stocking. We might as well go in. Rube. 
We’re goners, all right.” 

For Jimmy got up in the coming sunlight and 
looked straight down the path up which a long 
line of heavily-laden infantrymen was toiling. 
The officers walked to one side, and would tramp 
straight on the fugitives. There was no use in 
startling them — it might mean a bayonet from 
some excitable unterofficier . 

So Jimmy stood up defiantly, dusting his 
clothes again. He saw the leading officer star- 
ing curiously at him even before Jimmy began to 
yell and wave his hand. 

“Hi! — whatever it is in Dutch! — how about 
some breakfast!” 

The young officer fairly gasped. Another one 
barked something, and the marching column 
238 


CAMOUFLAGE FOR TWO 


stopped. The officer came on. Six paces away 
he stopped, stared first at the two erect Sam- 
mies, then down at their rifles, grenade packs and 
service automatics all piled in a neat military 
little layout. Jimmy almost laughed at the Ger- 
man’s amazement. 

“Americans!” gasped the latter in excellent 
English. The elder officer coming up cried out in 
German. A squad of the soldiers swung out 
from the column. The captain turned to the 
others : 

“V omdrts! JJ 

And the column trudged on, the soldiers look- 
ing with dull surprise at the group by the road- 
side. How two American infantrymen had got 
inside their lines fully armed and unhurt, must 
have amazed them but only the officers took no- 
tice. 

The young oberlieutenant folded his arms 
looking at Jimmy May who stared steadily back. 

“You have come from — where?” 

“Never mind — sir. We surrender — that’s all, 
isn’t it?” 

“But in our lines !” The officer turned to the 
captain who was demanding explanation. They 
239 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


conferred in gutturals. The squad sergeant 
placed his men around the prisoners. The cap- 
tain spoke on, and the lieutenant evidently ex- 
plained that the Americans refused to answer 
questions. And after more confab, the captain 
went on after his company, with final commands 
to his under-officer. 

The lieutenant pointed down the path and 
spoke sharply. 

“Down that way! We shall find out about 
this!” 

And Jimmy May and Rube Tolliver started 
off under the squad guard which carried their 
discarded equipment. When they reached the 
creek road the sergeant led the way. Over their 
heads Jimmy saw a trio of shells far and high — 
American shells, that dipped down on the further 
ridge and exploded — how he wished he might 
have got word back to the guns just where the 
German howitzers lay concealed in the wooded 
creek! 

A mile or more along the dusty road the escort 
trudged, past disorderly huts of the Boche artil- 
lery, supply trains and repair stations. Under 
the frowning hill towards the American lines the 
240 


CAMOUFLAGE FOR TWO 


valley slope was thick with all sorts of enemy ac- 
tivity. Lines of sloven soldiers at the kitchens 
stared indifferently at the two Sammies, but the 
escort kept them on until they weie shoved into 
one end of a long wooden barrack. There the ser-^ 
geant growlingly indicated they could rest, and 
Jimmy and Rube threw themselves down on the 
hard boards, tired, dirty, hungry, stared at their 
four guards, and then at the other end of the 
shed behind a little railing of which the lieutenant 
was making a report to some officers at a table. 

After an hour a dirty kitchen boy brought 
them some black bread and a concoction that 
passed for coffee. They drank and munched si- 
lently, and presently a sergeant summoned them 
to the railed portion of the guard barrack. 
Standing by the table the young lieutenant who 
had brought them in, questioned them — a very 
perfunctory questioning, it became, for the two 
Americans refused to answer much and the of- 
ficers soon saw they would get little. 

But from the conference Jimmy gathered that 
the Germans supposed that he and Tolliver were 
the sole survivors of an American raiding party 
that had entered the magazine and which had 
241 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


been wiped out by the explosion along with scores 
of the Boches. And instantly Jimmy pretended 
to assent to this ; he had an uneasy feeling that if 
the enemy knew this stunt had been pulled off by 
two lone Sammies it would go hard with them. 
Their grenades had started a fire which had com- 
municated to the boxed explosives, and then to 
the main magazine, and the Germans had failed 
to stop it. The prisoners guessed that the 
howitzer batteries camouflaged along the creek, 
had been entirely put out of business for the time 
being. 

Presently they were led to another room, or- 
dered to strip and their clothes were searched 
minutely. And Corporal May went to sweating 
hard; he would have lost an arm rather than his 
Croix de Guerre! 

But as the sergeant and the guards watched 
them standing stark naked, while they felt over 
the uniforms, Jimmy did what he thought was 
a mighty clever piece of work. There was a lit- 
tle pile of dust and sweepings by the bench where 
he stripped off and, pulling his sock inside out 
leisurely, he slipped the war cross into this stuff 
and then casually brushed the dirt over it. Then 
242 


CAMOUFLAGE FOR TWO 


he watched the Boches search his shoes, legging, 
trousers’ linings — every inch of his stuff, even 
into his hair and ears. After that, with a grunt, 
their clothes were flung back to them — and Jim- 
my’s fell square over his hidden war cross! He 
almost laughed when he craftily palmed it back 
into his shoe and laced his legging again — he had 
outgeneraled the dunderheads to start with ! 

Then they were given a number and a tag cor- 
responding with the number opposite their names 
in a book which evidently contained all that the 
Germans were able to guess about them; and 
then ordered curtly out. Half an hour later four 
more prisoners marched into the guard barrack; 
three French chasseurs and a lanky American 
artilleryman who gaped to discover his fellow 
countrymen. 

“Hello!” he said. “Out o’ luck, hey? What’s 
yer outfit?” 

Jimmy started to answer when the German 
sergeant bawled out warningly. The French- 
man shrugged, and all were silent. The tall ar- 
tilleryman growled, but they all sat down, un- 
washed, hungry again and depressed. It was 
high noon when they were ordered out and joined 
243 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


another prisoner squad a mile down the creek — 
all French, these last were — and then the little 
forlorn column marched away again with a sul- 
len guard forward and rear. The road wound 
up the opposite hill, through a shell-tom vineyard 
and village, all deserted, for this slope was under 
the fire of the allied guns. Shells were breaking 
lazily along the valley, and a silver airplane sailed 
serenely up, skirting the German lines but very 
high. Jimmy watched the bird of freedom hun- 
grily; he had a terrible depression now, feeling 
out of everything, cut off, buried alive — as if for 
him, personally, the great war had suddenly 
stopped, and he was a dirty, no-account tramp 
merely wandering on over the world without 
home or duty. 

Over this next ridge the prisoners passed roads 
along which German infantry lay idly among 
their arms’ stacks; and fields where guns were 
parked; and temporary headquarters were 
marked by divisional flags, and groups of gray 
motor cars. It looked as if a big concentration 
was being effected here, and Jimmy wondered. 
They crossed several little field railways running 
parallel to the hills and with confusing switches 
244 


CAMOUFLAGE FOR TWO 


branching off here and there upon which stood 
military trains. Where these lay in the open the 
tracks were camouflaged with boarding, branches 
and twig wattles. But everything was quiet 
enough ; on the ridges the artillery duel had been 
growling all morning, and the prisoners could 
look back to the white shell puff s breaking along 
the second line of hills. 

At noon they reached what appeared to be a 
permanent camp of the Germans, and laid by the 
roadside by a big base hospital. The imperial 
standard flapped lazily from a stone chateau a, 
half mile further on. 

It was the first real kaiser flag that Jimmy 
May had seen and he watched it curiously. 
“Tolly, I guess we’re a long, long way from 
home,” he muttered. “Maybe old Bill himself 
hangs out there!” 

“I ain’t worryin’ about Bill — what I want is 
to eat — and to wash my feet, Jimmy.” 

Jimmy, himself, had been limping the last few 
miles. The little bronze cross was cutting into 
his ankle, but he heroically tried to forget the 
pain. The other American prisoner lounged 
nearer. The discipline had been a bit relaxed, 
245 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


and the eleven Frenchmen were talking. The 
only one who spoke English at all, joined them 
presently. 

“Mes amis ” he began, “we are to take that 
train down there very soon. I think it is to be 
the main prison camp at Gustrow in Mecklen- 
burg for us. After that — ” he shrugged — “what 
did you do in America^” 

“Do?” queried Jimmy, “the army — that’s all. 
Before that, in school — and I played left field on 
the town team, Frenchie!” 

The chasseur looked perplexed. He couldn’t 
understand the Sammies’ ever hopeful joshing. 
But Jimmy May was telling the truth. The 
German sergeant was sauntering nearer to lis- 
ten. 

“Be careful when they register you for work,” 
whispered the young Frenchman. “I heard the 
Americans were going to the salt mines.” 

He turned and sat down with his group. Jim- 
my was silent. He had heard of the dreaded salt 
mine gangs where prisoners whom the Germans 
particularly hated were sent. He suddenly felt 
a new problem, grim and terrible, arising in his 
young life: and he thought worriedly of his 
246 ' 


CAMOUFLAGE FOR TWO 


mother in far-off America. He wondered when 
he would get word to her of his fate, if ever. 
And while he was dispiritedly pondering it, the 
sergeant growled: 

“Auf!” 

And down the dusty road past the motor truck 
line the weary prisoners legged it again — noth- 
ing to eat all day save the black bread and cof- 
fee. They were marched into a wire-inclosed 
little railroad siding where a dirty line of freight 
cars lay; and here, sitting alongside of one that 
held a dozen French prisoners, they had more 
black bread and turnip soup — miserably thin and 
bitter soup. Tolliver dumped his in the cinders. 

“Not hungry enough yet, Jimmy. I’ll gnaw 
away on this bread, or what-you-call-it. Oh, for 
the old bully beef and real coffee, eh?” 

A red-faced officer came along, asked for the 
new prisoners, and the sergeant gave him their 
cards. Then the train officer growled for them 
to get aboard, and the fourteen piled up in the 
dirty cattle car. Jimmy sighed and sat down. 
It was bad business — the glory of war was far 
from his ardent soul. 

“But all right,” he grumbled, “it’s all for 
247 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


home folks, Tolly! But it seems like a bad 
dream, doesn’t it to you?” 

Then with a jar and a jerk the little train 
pulled off. There was but one car of prisoners ; 
the others appeared loaded with German troops, 
going back, perhaps, to some rest or reorganiza- 
tion camp, for they appeared to be men stupid 
with fatigue, ragged, dirty and sullen. 

“Say,” grumbled the artillerymen, “those guys 
look worse off than we do, don’t they?” 

“They’ve been in a big milling, somewhere,” 
agreed Jimmy. “I guess they’re those Bavari- 
ans that our fellows licked to a finish last week 
up in the Reims sector. Reckon they love us 
Sammies, eh?” 

The train crawled on northwestwardly. Jim- 
my and Tolliver had been gloomily admitting the 
impossibility of escape. The car gave them open 
views of the rolling country, but it was alive 
everywhere with enemy camps, trains and sta- 
tions, and a lone Yankee would have no chance 
of either concealment or travel. The cars rattled 
and creaked, and finally, toiling up a ravine 
among higher hills, stopped altogether with a 
jar. After a wait back came the sergeant of 
248 


CAMOUFLAGE FOR TWO 


the prison guard. He opened the slatted door. 

“Drwnten!” he ordered, indicating that they 
should tumble out and go forward. Five cars 
up, passing the troops staring out the windows, 
the prisoners saw that the rail had spread and 
one of the coaches had ground its wheels down 
in the ties. Some workers were already bring- 
ing jacks, and the sergeant kicked out a dozen 
shovels for the captives. Then he ordered them 
to work in digging under the displaced track 
while the Germans labored with the derailed car. 

Jimmy swung his shovel down in the cinders. 
There was nothing for it but work with the bayo- 
nets of the guards at their backs. For two hours 
the prisoners and the railroad troops worked to- 
gether; and then, while the little engine shunted 
the car slowly away from the spread rail, the 
prisoners were permitted to climb back on the 
embankment and rest. Dog-tired and weak they 
were from fasting, and Jimmy closed his eyes, 
stretched on the dusty grass. Then he opened 
them, and his glance went to the car tops. 

There was something he hadn’t noticed from 
the ground! Every car top was camouflaged 
rudely; painted in gray and yellow daubs, and 
249 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


over and among these were laid branches with 
lifeless leaves still clinging. He saw now that the 
dummy engine was even more elaborately 
dressed, and that in some spots the branch camou- 
flage was much higher than in others. 

Rube Tolliver was watching the train top also. 
L “Airplanes must be workin’ this line,” he 
grunted. “I reckon they do try to mess up the 
communications a bit. Well, somehow, it 
wouldn’t be so bad if — it might be better’n them 
salt mines, Jimmy!” 

Jimmy was still for a time. “Say,” he mut- 
tered presently, “Rube, would you take a 
chance?” 

“Chance?” 

“A fellow — if he could get to the car tops, 
could crawl under some of that stuff. It’ll be 
dark in an hour. If ” 

“Crazy!” growled Rube. “If we got off we’d 
be in Germany!” 

“I don’t care. A chance is a chance. These 
fellows ain’t payin’ much attention now. And 
our prison car — it’s got a lot of thick stuff on it, 
Rube. Once a fellow was under, and laid 
tight ” 


250 


CAMOUFLAGE FOR TWO 


“Raus!” the work sergeant was saying to the 
Frenchmen down the bank. The weary captives 
arose and shambled back on the track. The 
guards watched them pass. At the prisoners’ 
car the Frenchmen began to clamber in. Rube 
and Jimmy were near the last. Rube’s eyes went 
covertly at the nearest guard leaning sleepily on 
his rifle. 

“Can’t be done,” he muttered. “Awful chance, 
Jimmy!” 

Jimmy was swinging up to the door; he had 
really given it up himself with the sentry not 
twenty feet away. And just as he got his knee 
on the car floor, the engine gave a sudden ter- 
rific jerk on the train. The crowding prisoners 
humped and stumbled all around Corporal May. 
Forward an officer had been hurled violently off 
the steps. The guard muttered and stared, for 
an instant his back to the prisoners. Jimmy 
turned his head; every Boche was watching the 
accident, listening to the swearing oberlieutenant . 

“Hist!” whispered Jimmy, and with a cat-like 
climb up the slatted car side, a lunge and a 
squirm, he lay out flat on the roof, under the 
dry rustling leaves of the camouflage. Another 
251 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


instant and a sweating body lunged in beside him 
and lay still. They heard, above the jar and rat- 
tle of the train, and the angry voices down the 
track, a surprised mutter below among the 
Frenchmen. And another instant the car door 
was violently slammed and the guards went 
forward. 

Still as death the two Sammies lay, wonder- 
ing if they dared draw their legs closer up under 
the leafy concealment. And in another moment 
the little train went jerking up the ravine, a 
cloud of smoke pouring back, and cinders rat- 
tling down over the fugitives. 

“Done it!” gasped Tolliver. “May get shot 
for this, bucky — but we’re here!” 

“There are four guards in the car,” whispered 
Jimmy, “but I don’t think any are on top. We 
got to drop off this, though, before we strike any 
station. After that ” 

Jimmy stopped; he couldn’t think after that. 
But they would be free for a time, hungry, starv- 
ing, on the soil of the enemy, but free men for 
an hour. The roar and rattle of the train al- 
lowed them to move about and converse. They 
knew the French prisoners, just under them, 
252 


CAMOUFLAGE FOR TWO 


must be aware of the escape ; the guards had been 
too much absorbed in the officer’s accident to 
count the captives as they clambered in. But, 
sooner or later, they would discover that the two 
Yankees were missing. 

Jimmy crawled around under the camouflage 
branches so that he could look out on the pass- 
ing landscape. 

“Got to be done soon. Tolly,” he muttered, 
“before the first stop.” 

“Can’t do a thing but take to the hills and 
game it out long as we can,” grunted Rube. “I 
suppose there are French people in this section 
who’d help us if they dared.” 

Jimmy gloomily watched the country. The 
train was laboring up a long grade, more slowly 
all the time. And presently it came to a jarring 
stop out among some quiet fields with the sun 
over the low wooded hills to westward. Jimmy 
turned to his comrade ; this was bad — they would 
be discovered if they tried to jump from the 
train when it was still, for the guards would de- 
tect any untoward sound. But the silence now 
grew rather curious. Save for weary mutter- 
ings in the prisoners’ car nothing stirred, after 
253 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


a few orders up forward. Peering cautiously 
over the car top and towards the engine, Jimmy 
saw a trio of German officers out — and they 
were watching the sky westward. Then sud- 
denly, at an exclamation from one, they all 
dodged in close to the train. 

Jimmy listened to the quiet summer peace. 
And suddenly Rube Tolliver nudged his shoul- 
der. “Listen,” he whispered. “Get that, boy?” 

It seemed that a great nest of bees had arisen 
over the hills to the northwest. Against the yel- 
low sky the soldiers saw a black slit, then an- 
other, and two more came up swiftly from due 
north. The roar of the motors broke out menac- 
ingly. No need for guessing now! 

Every man on the troop train, Germans and 
prisoners alike, knew that it was a squadron of 
allied bombing airplanes evidently returning 
from some raid on the great military depots in 
the Metz area. 

They knew, too, that, with the sun at their 
backs and the train locomotive still pouring a 
black cloud from its stack, every keen-eyed hawk 
of the sky must spot their location. The air- 
planes had dived instantly when they came over 
254 


CAMOUFLAGE FOR TWO 


the ridge, and now began to maneuver in a wide 
circle, apparently without fear from any anti- 
aircraft gun in this section. 

“Spotted us,” muttered Tolliver. “See that 
leader swooping low to the left — and they’re all 
stringing out to come over this outfit not a thou- 
sand feet up — no, it ain’t five hundred!” 

They heard a stir and a clamor in the prison 
car. The men cooped there could not see the 
Allied raiders, but they could hear the deadly 
beat of the motors. Some broke into cries and 
jeers, and the guards shouted hoarsely for si- 
lence. Further up the troop cars were held to 
iron discipline, in a hope that the train might 
escape observation under its camouflaged top. 
Rut Jimmy and Rube Tolliver, crouched under 
the leafy concealment, knew better. The aerial 
patrol had them dead to rights, unprotected and 
helpless. 

“Jimmy,” whispered Rube, “we got to lie here 
and take this !” 

“We got to take a chance. If we jumped and 
ran the guards would shoot before we got ten 
yards. No, wait — for the bust-up!” 

Just then there came the crash of some awak- 
255 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


ening gun a mile distant along the railroad, then 
another and another, as the archies discovered 
the airplanes which had lowered for the attack. 
Jimmy saw the first machine rushing from a 
point dead ahead of the train down upon them, 
low — terribly low, it appeared. He dodged back 
breathlessly, and then came the roar of a bomb 
ahead, mingling with the snarl of the airplane’s 
engine as it rushed over them. Then another ex- 
plosion shook the earth nearer. Dodging his 
head out again, Jimmy saw the right-of-way 
ahead was buried in smoke and dust. And far 
above this came the second bomber square on 
the trail of the leader. 

“Zoom!” went his bomb five cars this side of 
the locomotive. It struck not ten feet from 
the train and blew the entire side in. A fright- 
ened shout ran up and down the whole troop 
train. Men came leaping from each side and 
scattering up the bank. Two more terrific 
crashes broke ahead, one of them a fair hit. 
Jimmy and Rube had sprung to their feet now. 
A wild howling from guards and prisoners alike 
came from the locked car. Just over it now 
Jimmy saw a great gray biplane speed above the 
256 


CAMOUFLAGE FOR TWO 


smoke. He even could see the hooded pilot 
watching down. Then the bomb fell like a plum- 
met. Jimmy leaped far to the left, and he heard 
Tolliver strike beside him. But the bomber had 
missed his prey, luckily for the cooped French- 
men. The explosive blew out a fountain of dirt 
on the other side. The two Sammies were charg- 
ing up a slope, through some little trees and 
then into a scrawny grain field. Behind them 
came other quick explosions. The train was al- 
most buried in huge brown patches of dust and 
smoke, and from under this, everywhere, fright- 
ened soldiers were streaming. 

The distant roar of the archies came now 
through the lessening racket of the bombs. Off 
to the south Jimmy saw the string of air-men 
looming up again to their safe altitude to pass 
the guns. The last of them let a bomb go that 
fell harmlessly beyond the last car. But the 
train was a blazing shambles — it had been struck 
in five places on either side of the prisoners’ 
car in the center. 

As the two panting Sammies reached the far 
side of the field they saw that their fellow- 
prisoners had escaped harm. Dark figures were 
257 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


swarming around the train; officers were shout- 
ing, bringing the mob back to discipline, seek- 
ing out the killed and wounded. 

“No place for us !” gasped Jimmy. “Come on! 
Up in that vineyard and sneak low!” 

They were among low, knotted grape vines 
now, stumbling on. The anti-aircraft guns were 
still volleying shrapnel into the sky as the raid- 
ers disappeared into the dusk. Jimmy and Tol- 
liver climbed a stone fence, crossed a road and 
climbed among some trees on a higher ride. Dog- 
tired and weak, they sank down to breathe. 
Jimmy knew his hidden cross of war was dig- 
ging blood out of his ankle under the tight leg- 
ging. But he wouldn’t take a chance on remov- 
ing it yet. 

He got up and limped after Tolliver into a 
cleared pasture of the desolate hills. A rough, 
wooded country stretched north and east. They 
stared at it in the deep twilight. It was very 
still save for a final bark of one of the archies 
after the air-men who had sped on by now many 
miles to the southwest. 

“Great work, that!” said Jimmy. “Hope it 
was some of our Americans ! Some day I’d like 
258 


CAMOUFLAGE FOR TWO 


to tell ’em how completely they walloped that 
troop train — and by beautiful luck didn’t hit the 
prisoners !” 

“But it makes you lonesome to see ’em go!”^ 
muttered Tolliver. “Awful lonesome, for you 
and me, Jimmy.” 

“But — ” muttered Jimmy — “they ain’t aft 
gone yet! There comes a plane! See, slipping 
lower back on us! Maybe it’s a Boche, though!” 

They could just make it out in the dusk. Then 
Jimmy gasped with surprise, for the machine 
was winging down silently in a long slope. The 
soldiers saw the last light on its gray wings as 
it careened and slipped behind the trees not a 
half mile from them. 

“Landed!” muttered Jimmy. “Now what? 
It can’t be a Boche! No — one of our fellows, 
and they winged him. Forced landing, and he 
volplaned around and down to get away from 
their defense line. Fat chance he’s got, Tolly!” 

“Maybe it’s only engine trouble — and maybe, 
in the dusk, they didn’t see him. Say, maybe 
we could help him out, Jimmy!” 

“Right,” gasped Jimmy, limping up and on. 
“Got to help if we can!” 

259 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


And, forgetting their own desperate plight, 
the two Sammies set off through the trees in 
the direction of the lost bird-man. They came 
out in a little clearing upon which they saw the 
machine. And a young American aviator had 
just unstrapped the dead body of his bomber 
and machine-gun fighter from the rear seat and 
laid him out silently on the grass. He didn’t 
even notice the two soldier-fugitives when they 
stopped behind him. 


CHAPTER XI 


THE MEANING OF THE CROIX DE GUERRE 



ORPORAL MAY walked on quietly, and 


ten paces from the silent airman, who was 
gazing down at his dead comrade, he spoke 
softly. The aviator whirled about, made a mo- 
tion as if to draw a pistol, then stopped to stare 
at the two American soldiers. 

“Friends, sir,” muttered Jimmy. “We saw 
you land here.” 

“You?” gasped the young officer. “How on 
earth ” 

“Prisoners, sir — just escaped from that Ger- 
man troop train which your squadron bombed 
back there. Can we help you, sir?” 

The airman stared incredulously. “Prisoners 
— and we bombed you? That’s tragic — bombed 
our own fellows!” 

“You didn’t. There was but one car of pris- 
oners — and it wasn’t touched. You tore the 
train up pretty bad, though.” 


261 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 

“Good. It was just a lucky chance. We 
were returning from a raid on their supply sta- 
tions in the Metz area. And the archies got 
me with shrapnel. Killed my machine-gun man 
— and put some bullets into my motor that 
stopped it somehow or other.” He looked down 
at his dead companion. “Poor Barton! — he was 
good as they come. You will help me carry him 
to that thicket? The best we can do is a soldier’s 
burial.” 

“There is none better — for a fighting man, sir 
— is there?” 

“You’re right, Corporal,” said the aviator with 
a faint smile. “The best way to go — fighting it 
out. Come on — there’s little time.” 

Slowly the three carried the body of the air 
fighter ten yards back into the little grove. It 
was dark when they dug and scooped a shallow 
grave for the soldier of America. Some broken 
boards, which Tolliver found back by a road 
running down the farther slope where there had 
been a building of some sort, served as picks 
and shovels. But it was hard and long work. 
When they had reverently laid the dead aviator 
262 


MEANING OF CROIX DE GUERRE 

in the excavation, Jimmy looked up to his silent 
companions. 

“I used to know an old Confederate veteran 
back home, sir — in Louisiana, he lived — who told 
me that in the Civil War they used to bury their 
boys lying on their sides — an arm up over their 
faces. To keep the dirt away a bit, sir — and be- 
cause it was just the way a soldier would sleep 
out in the open most naturally. This old Con- 
federate thought it was right and fine to be laid 
that way when a fellow was buried out in the 
open, you see.” 

“Yes?” said the officer, “Barton was a South- 
ern boy — his people fought in the old war, too. 
So, as the old Confederate would have had it, 
he shall rest.” 

When the silent little task was done the lieu- 
tenant muttered a last good-by to his comrade’s 
resting place, and the three stole back to the 
quiet hill field where the biplane lay. Then the 
aviator whispered of his plans. He was Flight 
Commander Denison of a bombing squadron of 
the American air forces, and this was his third 
foray over this sector of the enemy’s land. He 
knew the country well on the way hack to the 
263 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


front lines; and he shook his head at the idea 
that the fugitives could get through them. 

“It seems certain that the Germans did not 
see me land just here — that high ridge concealed 
the last slant I took, perhaps. They probably 
think I landed in the more level places across the 
valley. I took a chance on planing down on 
this ridge for that very reason.” 

“Doesn’t seem to be any one around here, sir — 
that’s a fact,” answered Jimmy. “They’d have 
been at us before this. It’s about a mile back to 
the wrecked train, and I suppose that affair has 
taken their interest for a time. Maybe they 
haven’t missed Tolliver and myself yet.” 

The aviator was busied about his engine. The 
gray planes were hardly visible in the dark, and 
the trio of fugitives talked in whispers. They 
might have some hours to consider the situation 
before discovery. The airman told Jimmy it 
was some twelve miles to the nearest allied po- 
sition in a direct line. After awhile he came 
crawling from the motor. 

“Nothing to it!” he whispered. “A shrapnel 
bullet plugged into the copper tubing leading 
to my carburetor — a glancing swipe that bent 
264 


MEANING OF CROIX DE GUERRE 

the tube in without breaking it a bit. Boys, I 
will have that machine in the air within an hour!” 

“Bully, sir!” whispered Jimmy back, joyful 
himself at the young officer’s jubi^nce. “And 
we’ll go sneak along that road each^Way, acting 
as patrols. If any Boche comes near this ridge 
we’ll start him on a chase away from this place.” 

“Yes? And you, corporal?” 

“Oh, well! They’d get us anyhow in the end! 
And you, sir — the life or freedom of an airman 
is much more valuable than a couple of dough- 
boys like us. It’s for home folks we’re thinking, 
sir!” 

“You’re right.” Lieutenant Denison laughed 
softly. “But it’s fine of you to see it so clearly. 
All right — save me if you can — for the folks back 
home! But I want to tell you — I can take one 
of you back in Barton’s seat. One of you, 
mind!” 

In the dark there was silence. Two hungry, 
ragged doughboys stood watching the stars over 
the hills. One of them could go back to free- 
dom and to duty, could, he ? And the other — to 
a German prison, or to death! 

Jimmy May knew that Tolliver was staring at 
265 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 

him in the dark. Each knew what the other was 
thinking. Freedom — life — was sweet; but there 
was his bunky, the fellow each had soldiered with 
from the Sonora dust and mesquite to the gas- 
drenched fields of France. 

Tolliver was the first to speak. He did not 
address Jimmy, but the officer, and in a casual, 
respectful, line-of-duty voice. 

“We’ll go back, sir — and lay up along the 
road. We’ve no weapons, but if, when your mo- 
tor starts, any Boche comes dubbing up to this 
hill, Corporal May and I’ll lace into him — into 
a dozen of ’em.” 

“Very well, sir. I think the plane is all right, 
when I open that feed pipe again. When you 
hear the motor, get to me quick as you can. I 
can carry one, in Barton’s seat — sorry that is 
all.” 

The two doughboys hiked silently off in the 
dark. 

“Say,” muttered Tolliver presently, “I like 
that chap — all business. Nothin’ mushy about 
him. That’s right — the best man must be saved 
first. Him, first, of course. Then you, Jimmy — 
you’re worth a squad of me!” 

26 f> 


MEANING OF CROIX DE GUERRE 


“Cut this talk,” retorted Jimmy. “Me — I’m 
your superior officer, Tolly. I never like to re- 
mind one of the old bunch of that — but I most 
generally never have to. Now, we ain’t going to 
argue this. You get in that old bus with Lieu- 
tenant Denison — that’s all!” 

“Not on your life!” 

Tolliver stopped in the road when the two 
came out of the protecting trees. The starlight 
showed each man to the other dimly. There was 
not a sound, not a light anywhere in the night. 
The world war might have been on another 
planet as far as these two were concerned. But 
one fellow would go back to the great adven- 
ture and play his part for America, and the other 
to a Hunnish prison or to death. It was as sim- 
ple as could be; so simple that Jimmy sat down 
on the grassy bank listening quietly for the snarl 
of the motor which would awaken every patrol 
in the district. The man who was going back 
,*to the fighting line would have to dash at once 
for the machine and be off, so there was little 
time to talk. Corporal May felt a stinging little 
pain down inside his shoe, and slowly unlaced 
his legging until he could take the Croix de 
267 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


Guerre away from the bruised flesh. Anyhow, 
he was going to save that from the Huns. 

“Say, Rube, I want you to take this back — 
turn it in to the regimental adjutant so that — 
if anything happens — it’ll go back to my 
mother.” 

“G’wan,” grunted Tolliver, “what you take me 
for, anyhow?” 

“I’m going to stay. Rube. See here. Do 
you think a fellow who’d won the cross of war 
could do anything else?” 

“G’wan!” repeated Rube. “Do you think a 
guy that had soldiered with you, Jimmy, for 
three years, and never got no medal, could do 
anything else?” 

“Oh, you make me tired!” muttered Jimmy. 
He got up and crossed the road ditch to his 
bunky. “Say, Rube — back in Michigan, who you 
got there?” 

“Me? I’m married.” 

“Married? Well, for the love of Mike! — you 
never told any one in B Company!” 

“No. What for? But I got a wife and a 
little kid back on a little farm. They get all 
my pay, Jimmy — you know I always was the 
268 


MEANING OF CROIX DE GUERRE 


broke guy of B Company. We were just kids 
ourselves — Minnie and me — and once we had a 
little spat, and I got mad and enlisted. Well, 
there you are! We got all over that, but I was 
in the Army! Not sorry, either — she nor me. 
She’s just great as can be.” 

“You’re going back,” muttered Jimmy. 
“Come now!” 

“I heard you tell of your mother, Jimmy. I 
reckon she ” 

“Yes,” said Jimmy, eagerly starting to his 
bunky in the dark. “If she was here she’d sort 
of laugh at the idea that there was any doubt 
about what I was to do! She’s army people — 
way back — always have been. My dad was 
colonel of our regiment once!” 

“Thunder!” murmured Rube, “and you never 
told any one that!” 

“What’s the use? But you see all this makes 
it so I got but one choice — this, and besides that 
— winning the Cross of War! What’d the 
French think of me, anyhow — or President Wil- 
son, or any folks back home?” 

“What’d my kid wife think of me, then?” 

269 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


“She’ll never know. Besides it’s her we got 
to think about. That’s it, and ” 

On the still night broke a sudden loud crash 
which slowly lessened to an even purring of the 
airplane motor a hundred yards away. Jimmy 
whirled quickly to the woods. “There, now! 
That racket will stir every Boche in miles! 
Rube!” 

Rube was stumbling along after him. “Say,” 
he growled, “we’ll leave it to this aviation offi- 
cer — just cold reason — just who’s the best man 
to get away with him!” 

“I guess we won’t! Reason — nothing! I 
wouldn’t have a chance to make good! Reason 
can’t settle everything — the Cross of War means 
just a little bit more!” 

“Oh, Jimmy!” Rube kept grumbling away 
at him as the two dashed out of the thickets upon 
the little plateau upon which the airplane lay 
poised and humming. “Say, Jimmy, I won’t 
stand for this! I’ll make it a gamble with you! 
— we’ll draw straws, the short one loses!” 

“Quick!” Jimmy was touching the aviator’s 
arm in the darkness. “This chap’s never been in 
270 


MEANING OF CROIX DE GUERRE 


an airplane; I haven’t either, for that matter! 
But, get him in, sir!” 

“That seat, sir — behind.” The aviator was 
adjusting the leather straps about the after seat 
where the observer-machine-gun man was placed. 
Then he looked curiously at the two silent 
Sammies. 

“Well, sir?” He paused. “I suppose you 
have been trying to settle this affair. And be- 
ing American soldiers you have been quarreling 
as to who will go with me, each asking the other 
chap.” 

“Here, sir,” blurted Tolliver, solemnly. “We 
tried to reason it out — but the Corporal, sir — 
he won’t listen to reason! I told him the best 
man of us — best for the Army, sir — ought to be 
back there in the fighting line. That’s Corporal 
May, sir!” 

“And I ” put in Corporal Jimmy. “Well, 

all the argument I got is this — and I want you to 
take it back with you, sir!” 

In the dim starlight he thrust, under the avi- 
ator’s nose, the Croix de Guerre. 

Above the motor’s clatter Jimmy could see 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


that the young airman was muttering some- 
thing, with awkward hurriedness. 

“Rube,” cried Jimmy, “in with you; this is no 
time for a gabfest again!” Then he turned, 
bending close to the aviator. “My cross, sir — 
to the regimental headquarters — for me.” 

Big Rube Tolliver was also trying to break 
into the conversation, but Jimmy thrust him 
back. “You decide this, sir! My bunky pro- 
posed that once, and I refused. But I won the 
war cross, and you understand a fellow’s got to 
carry on after that!” 

“It ain’t right,” protested Tolliver, “it ain’t 
in reason!” 

“You lose,” commanded the birdman with a 
laugh. “There’s some things can’t be reasoned! 
In with you, sir!” Then he turned to Corporal 
May, and thrust a hand out of his glove. “Good- 
by — good luck — God bless you!” 

He had vaulted to the machine and turned 
to show Tolliver the observer’s seat and to strap 
him in, all the time shouting some instructions 
to the infantryman. Then he swung to the pilot’s 
seat. 

Big Rube Tolliver leaned unsteadily forward, 
272 


MEANING OF CROIX DE GUERRE 


reaching to grasp Jimmy’s hand. He was try- 
ing to say something, but his husky voice did 
not carry above the motor’s roaring. And sud- 
denly, with a slip forward over the short, level 
grass, then a fling gracefully into swifter speed, 
the biplane sped on, rising a bit until Jimmy 
saw its gray wings for a moment like a blur 
against the trees. Then it was lost against the 
starlight, flinging back to earth a scornful and 
jubilant song to the Boches over German land. 

Jimmy May stood upright in sheer admiration 
for a time. Then he walked slowly to the brow 
of the hill, staring off to the south. He could 
hear the purring of the airplane far and high 
now, and suddenly he remembered how close his 
friends were over there — and how hopelessly far 
to him! 

Why, in a few minutes. Lieutenant Denison 
and Tolliver would be over the German lines, 
over the French and American lines, and seek- 
ing for his airdrome markings for the safe de- 
scent. Twelve miles off there! — why, it was 
nothing! 

But twelve miles to a lone and unarmed Sam- 
mie, with thousands of foemen all around him! 

273 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


Suddenly Jimmy felt desperately tired again 
and hungry; the events of the last forty-eight 
hours had him reeling on his feet. 

“The Bodies’ll be scouting around this ridge 
sure now,” he muttered, “and first I’m going 
to make a get-away far enough to crawl under 
some shelter and sleep! Sleep — oh, boy! — a 
sleep !” 

He crept and floundered on, keeping to the 
thick brush above the road, and in the densest 
tangle he could find he crept far under and 
stretched himself out on the earth. 

“Sure got a big sleep coming,” he muttered, 
and drowsed off into absolute forgetfulness of 
war and hunger and exhaustion. 


CHAPTER XII 


FOLLOWING THE BOCHE TO BATTLE 

TT seemed no time at all until Jimmy stirred 
weariedly, conscious that something was go- 
ing on about him. He opened his eyes slowly 
to stare into the thickets above him. Then he 
felt the drip of rain from the leaves upon his 
cheek. Lame and aching in every bone from 
his night upon the ground, he sat up. The dark 
was still intense, but he felt he ought to be mak- 
ing some plan of escape, if possible, before the 
dawn. It was some moments ere his drowsy 
mind called back all the events since his cap- 
ture. And when it did he felt his former raven- 
ous hunger, and then that inside his shirt was 
an emergency ration of chocolate and hard bread 
that the aviator had given him. He had better 
eat that, at least, before the Germans picked 
him up again. So he sat in the drizzle and dark 
and munched it all. Then he was very thirsty 
and sucked away at some of the dripping leaves, 
275 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


and at last crawled out and stood upright. Pres- 
ently he began to wonder again what had awak- 
ened him out of his dog-tired sleep. 

“Guess I’ll have to wait for daylight to move 
anywhere,” he thought. “Just now one place is 
good as another.” 

So he drowsed away again, sitting on the wet 
grass in the drizzle. Then he heard that myste- 
rious stirring again, and started up. It was in 
the thickets quite near him this time. Jimmy 
strained his eyes watching the spot. A lighten- 
ing seemed to be coming at last over the rainy 
hills. The fugitive determined to see what was 
near him, so he crept noiselessly on. Presently 
he was sure he saw a form against the brush, and 
he heard the sounds clearer. Down he dropped 
and crawled on. And there, not ten feet distant, 
he discovered a cow peacefully reaching around 
at the grasses! 

Jimmy laughed aloud in his relief. He got up, 
felt forward and touched the animal’s damp 
nose. He found now she was tethered by a short 
line. He scratched her head; some good old 
friendly family cow, she was, and after her wel- 
come she went on at her breakfast. 

276 


FOLLOWING BOCHE TO BATTLE 


Jimmy sat down and studied the matter. A 
cow concealed away up on this brushy, rough 
ridge of the war zone hills? Then she was not 
a German cow, he reasoned. A refugee, contra- 
band cow, indeed, and some one, not friendly to 
the Boches, certainly must care for her. 

When the rainy dawn came Jimmy was squat- 
ting in the warm and drier spot where the cow 
had slept that night, watching her comfortingly. 
Over the hilltops the mists were drifting, and 
now his ears began to pick up the rumble of the 
guns again far to the southwest and he dispirit- 
edly remembered the war once more. 

“Shucks!” he murmured. “If I had a bucket, 
me for the milk!” 

The airman’s chocolate ration had been gone 
some hours ago, and now with the growing rum- 
ble of the battle of nations coming to his ears, 
Jimmy was more hungrily intent on this cow 
of France than he was the kaiser. And when the 
light grew better, looking down in the muddy 
grass Jimmy saw footprints. They were not his 
own and they were made before the night’s rain. 
He got up and followed them carefully back, as 
277 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 

fascinated as Robinson Crusoe on his cannibal 
island. 

“Kids,” he muttered, “sure as shooting! They 
come up and milk their cow on the quiet! Now, 
I’ll bet anything ” 

The rest of Corporal May’s remark was lost 
partly in a new deep roar of the distant guns, 
as if the battle was hitching up along a wider 
and nearer front, and partly a frightened ex- 
clamation just ahead of him in the path. 

For there was a small boy in a dirty blue 
blouse, carrying an earthenware flagon and a big 
tin cup ; he had turned as if about to run and 
then stopped defiantly. 

“Mon amir gasped Jimmy hurriedly. “Don’t 
go! I am le Samfnee ! 39 

The boy stared the harder, then he cried out 
sharply. Jimmy pointed at himself, the cow, the 
hills, the far battlefront, and then pulled out his 
tattered phrase-book, which the Roche guards 
had left to him. 

“Looky here — gar four Jimmy tapped his 
khaki breast and opened wide his arms. “How 
about some da lait from le com? Get me — 
278 


FOLLOWING BOCHE TO BATTLE 


American? Friend — Ami! Hi, kid — under- 
stand?” 

A wondering smile came from the boy. Then 
he jumped forward, tapped Jimmy’s sleeve and 
began to pour forth a string of words all of 
which were lost on the damp and hungry Cor- 
poral. The garfon pointed and whispered. 
Then with a final exclamation he sat down and 
began to milk his cow, pouring the foamy cup- 
fuls into the jar after handing the first one to 
Jimmy. He seemed fascinated at the way that 
warm milk slid down the Yankee’s throat. 

“Hold on,” said Jimmy, “you’ve got your 
cow hid out, and you need this milk at home 
for the family — ain’t that right? Well, I got 
enough, then! Go to it, kid!” 

So he refused any more, and waited until the 
cow was milked. Then he listened to the boy 
mutter. Apparently he had to be off at once. 
Jimmy guarded the milk while the lad took his 
cow down the ridge to water, it seemed, and 
then brought her back to be tethered deeper in 
the thickets. Then, when the young milkman 
took his flagon and started away, Jimmy fol- 
lowed watchfully. The lad seemed worried by 
279 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


this; and by his inability to speak a word of 
English. Finally he stopped Jimmy and point- 
ed. Through the lifting fog Jimmy could see 
far down in a wooded valley. A road showed 
here and there, and along it now Corporal May 
saw dense columns of gray-clad infantry wind- 
ing on under the fog. He whistled. The lad 
looked expectantly at him; then he pointed far 
back on the road. 

Field-guns ! Scores of them, horse-drawn, and 
motor-propelled, and on another road across 
the valley Jimmy saw other and heavier can- 
non trundling slowly on, now revealed, now hid- 
den to his eyes. 

The boy spoke rapidly and pointed southward 
and swept his arms wide. Jimmy understood 
that the movement had been going on all night. 
He understood what it meant — an immense con- 
centration was taking place under the protection 
of the line of hills. When the sun came out, 
undoubtedly the entire troop movement would 
vanish from sight in the wooded valley secure 
from the allied scouts of the air! 

“That’s it,” muttered Jimmy, “getting ready 
for a surprise drive on us. That’s why the gun- 
280 


FOLLOWING BOCHE TO BATTLE 


fire has been getting bigger all night. And the 
infantry and mobile artillery are being slipped 
up for a regular smash on us. Regular old 
Boche trick — same thing they pulled in Picardy 
and on the British in March. And they’re go- 
ing to start it on the Americans now! All un- 
der cover, not a column will move when the fog 
gets off the hills!” 

The French lad had listened to Jimmy mut- 
tering away. Then he pointed at Jimmy’s uni- 
form, and motioned for him to keep to the brush. 
Then he took his milk and scrambled down the 
steep path. Jimmy crawled out under the thick- 
ets and lay still. He could hear the chuffing 
motors faintly, but considering the thousands of 
enemies on the march, their stillness was remark- 
able. 

Corporal May pondered the situation. He 
wanted above all things that the American com- 
mand might know of this developing attack. He 
thought now less of his peril than of absorbing 
interest in the war game below. And while he 
was studying it despondently his little friend 
came slipping back through the fog. In a neat 
package he had a loaf of war bread, some strips 
281 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 

of salt meat and soft cheese. And he unrolled 
before Jimmy a worn, soiled workman’s blouse 
and trousers. Then he shrugged, pointed back 
in the woods. Evidently he feared to have the 
American down in the valley. Jimmy under- 
stood. It might mean death for the French 
family if they sheltered an escaped prisoner ; and 
besides, Jimmy would certainly be recaptured 
sooner or later if he went near any house or 
camp. 

But he took the little presents gratefully, mak- 
ing up his mind that he would carry the peas- 
ant’s clothes along, but he had no mind to don 
them. He couldn’t pass himself anywhere for 
a Frenchman or German, he knew; for “Ameri- 
can” was written all over Corporal May in his 
accent, walk and countenance. If he tried to 
go on in the borrowed clothes he would be taken 
for a spy, undoubtedly. 

“My Uncle Sammy’s duds’ll have to do,” he 
smiled at the lad; “but all right — merci , le 
garcon ! I’m on my way! And if a racket starts 
on the front my chance of getting through may 
be better than if it’s quiet. Anyhow, I’ll take 
282 


FOLLOWING BOCHE TO BATTLE 


a chance! Good luck, kid — to you and the folks, 
not forgetting your old brindle bossy!” 

And he seized up his packages, and then the 
French boy’s hands. They smiled at each other 
a moment. 

“Vive les Allies!” whispered the boy of 
France. 

“Vive la France !” retorted Jimmy. “Vive la 
victoire-er , and all of it! All to the candy, and 
vans mit der Boches! Get that?” 

Then he turned and went back in the deep 
brush, leaving the lad lifting a warning hand. 
On the near road below him Jimmy saw a Uhlan 
patrol riding slowly down the valley. Climb- 
ing higher among the rocks, Jimmy set off cau- 
tiously, following the German Army on its way 
to battle. 

“Not that the Crown Prince’ll be cheered to 
have me,” muttered Corporal May, “but I may 
as well go this way as the other. Cheer up, 
Wilhelm, you’ll be hiking back this road your- 
self some day! You bet! — and in a hurry — 
rather a hurry! You won’t enjoy it much as I 
do now!” 

For Jimmy began to feel much better. His 
283 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


damp clothes were drying, and after he had 
eaten a third of his lunch packet he was pleased 
to observe that the clouds settled thickly on the 
hilltops. When the rocky woodlands gave way 
to open places he scouted cautiously about, keep- 
ing to what cover offered. He knew, sooner or 
later, as he neared the fighting front, that the 
hills would be taken up with artillery stations 
and observation posts. The heavy gunfire was 
continuous off to his right ; and when he came to 
where a lateral little valley cut in from the main 
one where the troop roads lay, he was not sur- 
prised to hear, suddenly, the awakening thunder 
of guns not a mile from him. He saw the smoke 
presently on a rugged spur across the lateral 
valley, much higher than where he stood. 

“Sure!” muttered Jimmy, “opening up here 
now, and I guess it’s me to lay up awhile!” 

For down in the open he saw a field railway 
curving in which served the big guns on the 
further slope. The whole line of hills seemed to 
be jarring with the cannonade — it was the big- 
gest racket that' Jimmy had yet heard. From 
all the high spurs ahead the Germans were hurl- 
284 


FOLLOWING BOCHE TO BATTLE 


ing immense shells upon his comrades many miles 
beyond this line. 

And as Jimmy watched the drift of fog and 
smoke, suddenly there broke a gray patch ahead 
of him in the little valley, enveloping a section 
of the field railroad. A fountain of dirt went up. 

“Ranged ’em right!” chuckled Corporal May. 
“That’s a big one from home, — yes, and there’s 
another just over that redoubt on the left! Atta 
boy! — Oh, you Yankee guns off there!” 

He snuggled down among the rocks and 
watched. The American high-angle fire grew 
more frequent. All along the ridge and down 
on the rear slopes where the Germans were con- 
centrated, the heavy guns of the boys from home 
were dropping shell after shell. Twice Jimmy 
saw allied aviators dimly through the misty scud 
beyond the hills. Presently a shell came with the 
roar of an express train over his head and struck 
back in the timber. It jarred Jimmy May to his 
teeth. He got up and dusted his cothes and sat 
down again. 

“What’s the use?” he said. “One place is good 
as another. I got to wait till dark and then get 
past the big gun stations. But then — if I do 
285 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 

that — there’ll be about four lines of trenches, 
I reckon; and if the Boches don’t get me, the 
Sammies will ! But I got one square meal ahead 
of me yet, so I’ll stick up close to home as a 
fellow can.” 

And all day, hidden on the back ridge, Cor- 
poral May watched the smoky and foggy hills 
ahead of him; when dusk came the American 
shells were lurid blotches exploding on the Ger- 
man lines, and at every one Jimmy thrilled as 
if a rough friend was greeting him. At dusk 
he ate the rest of his grub, drank rain water from 
a puddle on a stump and then started down in a 
detour around the main German position. 

“Here goes,” he murmured, “if I got any 
chance at all it’ll have to be just ahead of their 
reserve infantry, for they’ll certainly be shov- 
ing ’em up here to-night.” 

In the rainy dark he crossed an ammunition 
train railroad, slipped into a creek bed and be- 
gan to wade knee-deep. He discovered a bridge 
with a sentry post on it, but crawled under and 
past it undiscovered. Then he saw open coun- 
try lit everywhere by dull shell bursts, and be- 
yond that uncanny white flares. It was an in- 
286 


FOLLOWING BOCHE TO BATTLE 


ferno of noise and trembling earth, and Jimmy 
considered it gravely. 

“The infantry are at it,” he thought. “Maybe 
our gang is coming!” He stood up in the dark 
creek bed and waved a hand jubilantly: “Come 
on, you Yanks! I’ll meet you halfway!” 


CHAPTER XIII 


FOR THE FOLKS AT HOME 

C ORPORAL JIMMY MAY, wading on 
the rocks, slowly felt the creek current 
higher and fiercer over his knees. He had a hand 
up to the overhanging limbs trying to steady 
himself and watch the reddish blurs against the 
dark off to his right and left as well as just ahead. 
He felt, rather than saw, that the rough ridges 
which gave birth to this dashing rivulet had 
fallen away and a gentle terrain spread beyond. 
He was sure of it when, looking behind him, he 
distinctly saw the bursts from the German guns 
taking a rough, irregular line as far as he could 
distinguish them. This crest above the Marne 
was a veritable fortress which hurled its iron 
hail over the heads of the Boches in their trenches 
out to the fighting line. Ahead of him for miles 
the dark was lit by the gunfire of his own com- 
rades, but he was doggedly determined to keep 
288 


FOR THE FOLKS AT HOME 


on, and if he was recaptured it would be near to 
“home” as he could make it. 

So he stumbled and waded, listening and 
watching for any sign of the enemy. Once, 
along the bank, there were few trees, and the 
smell of stables came to him. He could just 
make out irregular humps and objects, and 
guessed it was a horse artillery depot or an 
ambulance station sheltered a bit by a bend of 
the creek under a steeper bank. But Jimmy kept 
boldly on past this undiscovered, to get into the 
fringe of trees again. Then, when he felt he 
was at last making progress, he suddenly stum- 
bled, lost his hold on a limb, and a moment more 
was swimming in a rush of water. He had come 
to the intersection of a much larger stream and 
deeper. But he swiftly decided to strike out for 
the unknown shore. One way was good as an- 
other to a lost soldier in the dark of the enemy’s 
land. 

So he swam on with the roughening current, 
watching the red blur of shells burst through dis- 
tant trees. Then he was swept under a steep 
bank, and on in complete darkness. Some bulky 
object finally loomed up close to his left and he 
289 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


went for it. But as his hand touched an iron 
bound corner he gasped, then swung silently 
under the overhang of a big barge, found a foot- 
ing on the braces of what appeared to be a 
great crude rudder, and there he hung, thinking 
it over. 

It was a barge all right, moored to the bank. 
Over the edge hung a tarpaulin, and beyond 
this barge was another with a shed roof. He saw 
a faint blur there and made it out to be a man 
with a lantern. Up on the bank he discovered 
another light, and raising cautiously on the line 
that moored the boat to the shore, he saw it was 
a German officer who appeared to be studying a 
paper by the aid of a flashlight. 

“None of my business!” murmured Jimmy, 
and crept back to his roost on the rudder post 
bracing. “I’ll just wait a bit for ’em to settle 
down.” 

So he folded himself up clammily just above 
the water, and wondered casually what would 
happen if the American artillery, just by acci- 
dent, dropped a six-incher on this old tub. It 
was some comfort to reflect that it would be 
more costly for the Boches than the Sammies, at 
290 


FOR THE FOLKS AT HOME 


any rate. Looking back upstream, he saw the 
dim blotches along the ridge where the German 
heavy guns were booming. 

But shortly he heard voices on the bank. Or- 
ders shouted out, and a stirring. The mooring 
line splashed heavily from the shore and began 
to snake up the barge side. And Jimmy felt a 
slow creak of the rudder post at his back. He 
dodged around like a cat. But nothing ap- 
peared. The big wooden rudder merely heaved 
off a bit. 

But the German barge fleet was swinging off! 

To say that Corporal May was startled is mild. 
For an instant he thought of diving off, and then 
he remembered that the Germans could not pos- 
sibly see him where he hung — and perhaps, yes — 
surely! — this supply boat would move on closer 
to the battle front. It was just for that purpose, 
and it was loaded deep. 

“Fine,” muttered Jimmy. “I’ll quit this ark 
when I have to!” 

He didn’t know what sort of power was pull- 
ing the four barges. From his roost nothing was 
visible but dark water and shore and the fire- 
spitting crest of hills which he was leaving. And 
291 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


for nearly an hour he sat, the rudder groaning 
by his side in its bracing, and the water bub- 
bling up around Jimmy’s shoulders. Once they 
slid under a bridge and he saw an idling patrol. 
Then a camp which he identified by faint glows 
in dugout doors on the low hills. 

“Then I’m getting up front,” argued Jimmy, 
“but they won’t hook this junk on much longer. 
She’ll be getting too close to our 75’s for com- 
fort.” 

Twice, indeed, out on the wooded bank, shells 
struck and exploded with startling savagery. 
One showered dirt far over the water. Corporal 
Jimmy scratched his wet head; he would have 
to quit this Boche free excursion some time, but 
he wanted to beat his way far as he could. 

But at last he began to hear shouts on the 
fleet as if some warning had been given. A 
hoarse voice right over his head by the rudder 
sweep answered. 

“Lass gehen !” 

And the fugitive heard a heavy rope hurled 
and strike the water. 

“Good-night,” murmured Jimmy, “me the 
other way now!” 


292 


FOR THE FOLKS AT HOME 


So he slipped off quietly, dived without a 
sound and swam downstream until he felt his 
lungs were bursting. Then he stroked gently 
to the surface, rolled over and exhaled quietly 
as ever, and got a breath. Then he sank again, 
turned and dived on, to come up again and get 
his breath. His getaway was never noticed. 

When he saw the dark bank looming up he 
swam close to it, grasped at some bushes and 
stopped. Then he lay resting. The barge fleet 
had been moored again. He saw a lantern mov- 
ing, and another on the bank which showed a 
cluster of forms. 

“Going to unload their stuff, and get back 
before daylight,” thought Jimmy. “Thanks, 
Bill! You did me a favor. But I wish I had 
my bearings !” 

For he knew now that the stream bore away 
parallel to the distant front line. The barge 
transport had come as far as it could. After 
making sure that no enemies were immediately 
about, Jimmy crept ashore and discovered what 
he expected — that a road followed the bend of 
the river. It wouldn’t do to stick around here. 
And the curve of the river bed would take him 
293 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


away from the front now. He hated to leave 
the shelter of the friendly trees. But off there 
he could see the white, unearthly flares rising 
slowly, and beyond the flashes of the guns. 

“It ain’t a raid,” muttered Jimmy. “Too big 
— our fellows are slapping a barrage down be- 
hind their front lines for two miles or more! 
Business— big business! May be French or 
may be Yank — but if I keep going I’ll have some 
Boches to deal with first.” 

Finally, thinking it over, he crossed the road. 
Twenty yards out in a field he tumbled into a 
shell crater. But Jimmy had done that forty 
times on his own side. So he crawled out, noted 
which direction the fire was heaviest and kept to 
the right of it. Certainly, any minute now, he 
ought to identify some German communication 
trench — it wasn’t all going to be easy as this. 
In fact, Jimmy, down in his heart, didn’t think 
he’d make it — just his eternal hopefulness and 
energy kept him trying with all his watchful eyes 
and clear head. 

“Where are they?” he growled, lying flat on 
the wet earth. “That last shell over there showed 
something like sandbags; yes! — they are, and I 
294 


FOR THE FOLKS AT HOME 


saw a pickle hat, too ! That’s communications all 
right!” 

Watching over the rough clods he saw the 
heads of a file of men slowly going along the 
communication trench forty yards to his left. 
Keeping them in view, he crept on. A quar- 
ter of a mile of this and, by the burst of another 
shell, he discovered the parados of a battle trench 
stretching across his path. A group of men 
about a dugout ^vere watching off to the right 
where the American barrage was heaviest. So 
Jimmy crept on about this. The whole plain 
ahead of the second German line was a welter 
of smoke, fog and shell flashes with the flares 
rising like dim white blankets beyond. 

“Looks pretty bad,” grunted Jimmy. “If I 
pass ’em I’m just going to get in our fire zone, 
and the boys are whooping it to-night.” 

But he had gone too far now to retreat. By 
day the Germans would find him without doubt. 
So he kept on and lay among the clods at last 
forty feet in the rear of the trench. Over his 
head went the mighty rush of the shells from 
the distant heights, and the American heavies 
hurled back their big ones to explode along the 
295 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 

creek and the hill slopes from which he had come. 
The night battle was on everywhere as far as 
he could see, and the ground trembled with the 
shock. Presently a trio of shells struck one after 
the other, almost in line along the German rear 
trench. Jimmy distinctly heard the Boches shout 
and call after this salvo. Then a shell swept 
down and hurled a jet of earth skywards not a 
hundred feet from him directly on the trench 
line. And Corporal May was on his feet in- 
stantly, and dashing squarely for this spot. Into 
the choking fumes and dusty smoke he sped, 
stumbled headlong into the wrecked trench, up 
among the disordered sandbags and thirty paces 
across before he flung himself flat on the ground. 

He was past one German line at least! 

After a moment he crept on. The American 
fire would grow more deadly every yard, but he 
had little ^:ir of the Germans sniping him even 
if they saw him, for they would not dream of a 
Sammie out between their first and second lines. 
So Jimmy kept on crawling, crouching, off to 
his right but slowly forward. At last he made 
out some dim objects in the lurid smoke which 
proved to be the broken walls and roofs of an 
296 


FOR THE FOLKS AT HOME 


entirely wrecked village. Cautiously he crawled 
to the nearest heap of bricks, expecting every 
moment to find the Boches. Coming to a stone 
wall that gave him an elevation of some fif- 
teen feet, he crawled up to lie along this. Then 
he made out the German first line clearly — a hun- 
dred yards beyond the smoldering hamlet. But 
not a soul was among the ruins apparently. 

“Too hot for ’em,” muttered Jimmy. “Our 
fellows have been knocking these bricks every- 
which-way! And it’ll be too warm for me, I 
guess!” 

He could see the American lines now when a 
star bomb or a shell lit up No Man’s Land, and 
seemed to part the smoke wreathes. 

“Ain’t two hundred yards!” muttered Jimmy, 
“but it might as well be two thousand miles! 
I’d be a goner in a minute out there — everybody 
on both sides would take a shot at me, even if 
I got through the Boche first trench — which I 
couldn’t!” 

A high-explosive shell curved down in the 
other end of the wrecked village which had con- 
sisted of not more than a dozen stone houses 
along a road, and the shock of it sent bits of 
297 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


Jimmy’s perch crumbling under him. And a 
hail of rocks and bricks struck all around. 

He understood by this why the Germans pre- 
ferred to hold their trenches on each side of the 
ruins rather than in them. He crawled down 
dubiously and along what had been the street. 
He stumbled over a machine-gun half buried in 
bricks, then the bodies of half a dozen of its 
defenders. Fifty feet away another wrecked 
machine-gun emplacement and more dead Boches 
half buried in the bricks. The Sammies had 
made this nest too hot to hold. Lying over a 
heap of rubbish Jimmy scanned the battle front. 
Something moved fifty yards out and directly 
in front. He made it out presently to be a low 
bank behind which figures crouched. There was 
a machine-gun crew, all right. A hundred feet 
to the left of it was another. Jimmy could just 
make out the crouched backs of the operators. 
There was another little group hidden away 
about some piece of machinery to the right. 

And beyond there, when the lights showed 
right, he saw the German first line of defense. 
But the infantry were apparently doing little 
save lie snug up from the American fire. 

298 


FOR THE FOLKS AT HOME 


“Wow!” muttered Jimmy when a sprinkle of 
shrapnel swept all about him from an exploding 
shell above. “If the fellows over there had the 
right range they’d wipe up the gunners. Rut 
they keep mauling these old ruins, and I’m ‘It’ 
for their observers.” 

He crawled back, lay along a low wall and 
rested. There was an attack coming sure as 
could be. The gunfire grew heavier until Jimmy 
could no longer see any of the German advanced 
line because of the smoke of exploding shells. 
He was jubilant at the fire of the American guns. 

“The Boches’ll have to get out of that,” he 
thought, “and if they drop back here they’ll be 
on me!” 

So he began to hunt a hole. Under the wall 
ran a crevice from which he began digging the 
bricks and fragments. In half an hour he had 
a hiding place — provided his friends over there 
didn’t knock it down on him, or even overthrow 
the whole wall with a heavy shell. 

Then he crawled into his crack and dubiously 
thought it over. It was the wildest night Jimmy 
ever put in — and the idlest, too, as he worriedly 
thought. He was itching to be in the game some- 
299 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


how. An hour more when it seemed the fire hur- 
ricane out there was at its height, Corporal May 
thought he detected a lightening of the sky. 

Presently he saw the drifting smoke more 
plainly against the gray clouds of dawn. Then 
suddenly he started, scrambled to his feet and 
stared out to the front. The bombardment had 
swept down to almost nothing. And instantly 
there broke out a rattling snarl of German ma- 
chine-guns and rifle fire all along the line. 

“The Yanks are coming!” yelled Jimmy. 
“Yep — out there in the smoke! — Oh, say, if I 
could only see!” 

It seemed as if, midst the uproar, he heard 
shouts and cries. Jumping up on his low wall, 
he saw now the four machine-gun nests in the 
middle ground ; and then, through smoke 
wreathes beyond them, gray figures coming. 
Here and there by groups, some firing back, 
some staggering among the shell-holes, the Ger- 
mans were retreating from the invisible front 
line. 

And then, over his head, a new deluge of ex- 
plosives burst — the American guns had raised 
the elevation and were drenching the back lines 
300 


FOR THE FOLKS AT HOME 


and the communications. Jimmy saw the 
retreating Boches everywhere now. They 
streamed past the machine-gun emplacements 
steadily back and on, jumping down in the com- 
munication trenches, taking cover in shell-holes, 
but they did not come near the wrecked hamlet. 
The retreating streams diverged and disappeared 
in the inferno behind Jimmy’s refuge seeking 
escape from the lifted barrage. Then his at- 
tention was taken by the nearer staccato of the 
four machine-gun crews out there pouring a 
deadly hail into his invisible but advancing 
comrades. 

All along the front this new racket grew. The 
heavier smoke was lifting, the daylight breaking 
through the clouds, and Jimmy saw with a catch 
of his breath presently a line of dim charging 
figures over the German front line. The Sam- 
mies had it! Working parties were leaping in, 
but the first wave was sweeping on. Jimmy saw 
the bayonets gleam dully, the little squads that 
carried the Browning guns, the bombing parties 
here and there — all along the Americans were 
pressing the defeated Boches. 

Regardless of the exploding shrapnel over 
301 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


him, and the heavier shells that jarred the ruins 
all about him, Jimmy yelled and pounded his 
steel helmet. Why, they’d be on him now! — he 
only had to avoid being bombed or bayoneted by 
the charging groups to be free ! 

But as he watched the line he was conscious 
that the snarl of the machine-gunners ahead of 
him had become a roar. And out beyond them 
the American attack was faltering. Groups had 
disappeared, stumbled down in shell-holes or 
been wiped out by the machines. It was as if 
the rows of figures had been moving picture 
shapes and had been jerked off. Against the 
smoke as far as he could see the attackers had 
disappeared. However it was going further 
along the line, right before this wrecked village 
the German machine-gunners had broken the 
assault. 

Jimmy was biting his fingers with fury. He 
could see it all and his comrades could not even 
tell from what points the invisible and annihilat- 
ing fire was springing, so well the emplacements 
were camouflaged low in the earth. Yes, it was 
the old story — the attackers had carried the front 
line, but were held up beyond. They could not 
302 


FOR THE FOLKS AT HOME 


mass enough men against this ruined hamlet 
to stand the machine-gun hail. It merely height- 
ened the slaughter, and Jimmy knew the Yankee 
officers would not send their men into the open 
until this murderous point was smashed. By the 
growing light he could see beyond the captured 
line now. A steel helmet or two, or a group in 
some shell-hole. His elevation of ten feet on the 
wrecked wall gave him a glance at the Americans 
which the machine-gun men had not. 

The American artillery might drench the 
ruined houses with shrapnel, but unless they dis- 
covered the emplacements out in front the in- 
fantry could not storm it. Jimmy knew by the 
lull that the Sammies had been held until the 
field guns behind had turned on the hidden ma- 
chine-gunners. But time was priceless; perhaps 
the Sammies on either side had rushed the Ger- 
man second lines, but the enfilade from this point 
would spoil the whole assault. 

“If they only knew!” muttered Jimmy. 
“Shorten their range fifty yards and they’d wipe 
out these fellows!” 

He stared again above his wall. The machine- 
gun shelters were plainly visible from his rear 
303 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


position. The German infantry were back in 
their second lines now deluged by the American 
barrage, but reorganizing to hold, for if the at- 
tackers succeeded here, the Boches would be 
driven across the river and the whole defensive 
zone clear to their heavy artillery line would be 
broken. They would have to get their big guns 
from the ridge or stand a chance of losing them 
in the next onrush of the victorious Sammies. 
Swiftly the possibilities unfolded to Corporal 
May’s alert and military brain. A stroke now, 
just here, and the demoralized Germans would 
give way again. He knew why the four machine- 
gun crews had been left here to utter sacrifice. 
They had to cover the retreat or die. 

“Have to pass it to ’em for courage,” mut- 
tered Jimmy. “They got no chance if our field 
guns spot ’em!” Again he crept to his position 
on the crumbling wall. Little jets of earth 
spouted everywhere out on the flat where the 
artillery searched vainly for the machine-gun 
nests. But they might blindly maul this field 
for hours, and if one machine-gun was left it 
would check the charge. Jimmy saw with grudg- 
ing admiration how skillfully the zone of fire 
304 


FOR THE FOLKS AT HOME 


from the four points was arranged — it covered 
every possible advance of the Sammies for a 
thousand yards on each flank. And every min- 
ute counted now. 

In the captured German first line he saw a fig- 
ure move. A head, then an elbow move slowly. 
An officer-observer, Jimmy guessed, trying to 
spot the machine-guns. Once an airplane came 
humming out above the smoke clouds — and sud- 
denly crumpled and fell. The shrapnel from the 
German batteries in the rear had got it. The 
afF air made Corporal May wild with rage. The 
aviator might have discovered the machine-guns 
in another instant. But the gun nests seemed 
to have done the desperate deed they were sent 
to do — held the Americans to the front line until 
the Boches reorganized their shattered units. 

Staring from his wall, as he lay flat among 
the broken brick and plaster, slowly an idea came 
to Corporal May that made him wince for a 
moment. He shut his eyes in thought, ground 
his teeth, then muttered: 

“It’s just for my gang out there — just for 
’em, and the folks back home!” 


CHAPTER XIV 

CARRY ON! 


GAIN he watched intently the form of the 



hidden American observer. He knew that 
other field glasses were leveled from many points 
between the captured German sandbags seeking 
out the points of death. And he knew that scores 
of American sharpshooters watched not only the 
whole field but the ruins behind it for any sign 
of life. 

Slowly crouching for the spring, taking his 
steel helmet in one hand and his handkerchief 
in the other, Jimmy leaped upright on the 
wall, stood a moment motionless, then thrust his 
right hand down and raised his left in the “pre- 
paratory” signal of the two-arm semaphore code. 
Slowly, deliberately he must move, now — not 
only the officer-observers but every Sammie 
sniper must see him — see him and also realize 
that it was not a German trick. They ought 
to know his uniform, Jimmy thought desper- 


306 


CARRY ON! 

ately, even at the distance and dirty and ragged 
as he was. 

Again he gave the “prepare” code signal, then 
slowly, hat in his left hand, handkerchief in right, 
in place of the signal flags that he had learned 
to use, Corporal Jimmy sent his silent message: 

SHORTEN FIRE FIFTY DIRECT 
BEFORE THIS POSITION. 

It seemed to Jimmy as he finished the last 
motion that he stood in a great silence. The 
thunder of the barrage was high over him, and 
the machine-guns barked away spitefully out in 
front and far on the flanks the rifle fire broke 
in uneven little volleys. But just ahead it seemed 
that nothing happened. He heard the dull lit- 
tle plod of the shrapnel striking on earth and 
stone all about him, but he had heard these 
sounds all morning. Crouching behind his wall, 
he wiped the sweat from his eyes, and muttered: 

“Maybe they didn’t get it! Maybe ” He 

arose a bit and glanced back. There had come 
a crash of rifles somewhere — the sharpshooters 
in the German second lines had picked him up, 
had they? 


307 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


“All right,” growled Jimmy, “but your ma- 
chine-guns ain’t wise yet! No — and just for 
fear our gang ain’t either, why, here goes!” 

And again he crouched, sprang upright on the 
wall and started to repeat the two-arm signal. 
He had just swung his left arm over and under 
his right to form the letter O, when suddenly, 
as a black blanket dropped before his eyes, 
the earth twenty yards in front fountained up. 
He staggered a yard to one side, and then he 
felt the old wall reel beneath him. The end of 
it had gone out in a volley of loose stones. He 
turned to jump and his feet went out from un- 
der him as a terrific rush of air and gas hurled 
him off the spot. He struck on his face in crum- 
bled bricks, his eardrums bursting with succes- 
sive concussions — crash after crash on each side, 
out in front, and above. 

“Oh, My-O!” gasped Corporal Jimmy, 
“they’re burning the place up ! They’re rocking 
it full of 75’s — they’re blasting it to bedrock!” 

He made a scramble for his hole, and reached 
it, to be buried in a shower of brick. The ruins 
shook under him and he felt a stinging, searing 
pain across his right shoulder and up his neck. 

308 


CARRY ON! 

“Go to it,” he whispered. “Blot ’em out — the 
rats !” 

The last Corporal May remembered was try- 
ing to wipe the bricky dust from his eyes to stare 
up in a cloud that was brown twisting streaks 
shot through with hurtling objects. Then he 
gave up. 

And when Jimmy began slowly to remember 
things he was conscious of a great quiet. The 
reverberations of big guns came, but they seemed 
far and like a peaceful summer storm. The in- 
fernal din that had been over and about him for 
twelve hours had all passed. He lay drawing 
in his breath slowly and then began to crowd 
and pick the plaster and brick from his body. 
Presently he could sit partly up. 

He dug away weakly at the stuff on his legs, 
and noted that he had lain in a bloody little nest 
and must have been there hours. His right shoul- 
der was stiff and swollen hugely so that he could 
hardly move his head. But he worked away with 
his left hand unearthing himself. A heavy ce- 
ment fragment lay across his ankles and pres- 
ently Jimmy despondently concluded that he 
couldn’t lift it nor had he strength to crawl from 
309 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 

under it. So he sat back a moment to rest. The 
sun beat down hotly on his face and he wanted 
to find his helmet. But he couldn’t twist his body 
far enough to see. What astonished him was 
to discover that his wall had vanished. 

“Now, how did that happen?” mused Jimmy. 
“Must have gone out right over my head!” 

He spoke aloud, and then he heard an aston- 
ished answer. 

“Hi!” some one yelled, “the Fritzies did hold 
this place after all. Here’s a fellow buried to 
his neck!” 

Jimmy heard a crunch of feet, then he looked 
up to see a soldier with the Red Cross on his arm, 
staring down at him. 

“A Sammie!” gasped the other. “How’d you 
get here?” 

Some one else came running up. The two Red 
Cross men were digging Corporal May out ; and 
the next moment carrying him over the brick 
heaps. Outside they laid him down. One be- 
gan to slit his coat, and the other to whistle for 
some stretcher bearers who seemed idling away 
their time out on the field. It all seemed quiet — 
all cleaned up and nothing whatever doing. 

310 


CARRY ON! 


When they washed his mouth out from the brick 
dust Jimmy began to demand things. 

“Where’s the outfit?” 

“They’re four miles over the Marne — they 
broke everything down here and went through. 
They got the third line and all the guns and stuff 
clear to the German main positions. Biggest 
thing yet, bucky, and you were out of luck to get 
this hunk of shell across your shoulder. And 
two shrapnel through your left leg, and ” 

“Good-night!” murmured Jimmy. “Anything 
else?” 

“How did you come to get buried by that wall? 
The Germans weren’t shelling it — it was our 
artillery pounding the machine-guns to a pulp. 
You certainly didn’t get away out ahead of our 
barrage all on your own?” 

“Didn’t I? Say, old saw r -bones, I went half- 
way to Berlin, and then I just came back to 
hurry you guys up!” 

“Hum,” the ambulance corps man knelt to read 
the identification tag on Jimmy’s neck. “Hi!” 
he said to the Red Cross man who was taking 
the data down on a card which would accompany 
the case of Corporal May for some time after. 

311 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 

“Hi! this fellow — his regiment is on the line 
six miles from here! How did he ever happen 
along?” 

Jimmy rubbed his identification tag with his 
one good hand. 

“Never mind. You fellows get me home. I’ll 
explain to my bunch — that’s all ! Ouch ! — it 
hurts! Everything hurts! But — we took the 
third line! Some party, Fritzie! — I know how 
it feels now, to be out where you got to yell: 
‘Them Yanks are cornin’!’ ” 

“What’s eatin’ on you, Bucky?” demanded the 
Red Cross man, “you ravin’ out of your head?” 

“Here’s the little wagon just beyond that line,” 
said the second man. “Get him up, there now!” 

Corporal May stifled his agony as he was lifted 
and slid upon the stretcher. His steel helmet 
was laid upon his legs and the bearers lifted the 
burden and started slowly back across the torn 
and riven ground, down into the captured Ger- 
man trenches and then on. He couldn’t see a 
thing except the blue sky, for he couldn’t turn 
his head any longer. 

When he was laid down again it was just be- 
hind a motor ambulance, and he could see the Red 
312 


CARRY ON! 


Cross men conferring with a trio of officers. One 
was an Artillery captain and the other an Infan- 
try captain and the third a major of the Signal 
Corps. Jimmy closed his eyes against the pain 
and waited for them to shove him into the ambu- 
lance. But he couldn’t help hearing the argu- 
ment. 

“The way you laid your fire down there was a 
caution,” the Infantry captain was saying. “I 
suppose that poor devil of a Boche deserter who 
wigwagged the machine-gun location to us, 
never had a chance.” 

“How?” demanded the Signal Corps major 
suddenly, “would any Boche common soldier 
have our semaphore code down so pat? Lieu- 
tenant Leroy spotted this fellow first on the 
wall — and he swears that it wasn’t any German 
deserter. It was an American, sure, he says.” 

Jimmy lay with closed eyes. He felt rather 
than saw a doctor bustle up to the ambulance, 
give him one sharp professional glance, and ask 
the Red Cross worker something. 

“We picked him up out in those bricks, sir. 
No, he didn’t have any arms, nor kit — he says, 
313 


JIMMY MAY IN THE FIGHTING LINE 


sir, that it was our own guns that slammed him 
— shrapnel and field guns.” 

Jimmy heard a mutter of surprise. A shuf- 
fle around his cot, and he opened his eyes to dis- 
cover four officers of four different branches of 
the United States Army staring down at him. 

“Impossible!” gasped the Infantry captain. “I 
was on observation for the first wave that went 
through, and none of our men could have got out 
there behind those machine-guns! Unless ” 

He bent lower and looked at Jimmy’s blood- 
soaked khaki blouse. From it he took a dirty 
card — the registration card which the German 
military prisoner guard had issued to him. “By 
Jove !” muttered the captain. “This corporal was 
there — on his way back!” 

“Was it you, sir?” demanded the Signal Corps 
major gruffly; “because if it was you did some- 
thing — you broke the way for the biggest mash 
we gave ’em yet, sir!” He lifted Jimmy’s hand 
gently. “You’ll get the Croix de Guerre for this, 
if it’s true!” 

“Yes, sir. But I got one already, sir. That’s 
why I had to put this over, I think. Just that. 

314 


CARRY ON! 

But when do you think I’ll get out of the hos- 
pital, sir?” 

“I give you,” put in the Army surgeon who 
had been feeling over Corporal May’s shoulder, 
“seven weeks — and a rest for a bit. You prob- 
ably can be sent home, if you want — on a rest; 
if you’re the chap who put our whole division 
through the line of the Marne!” 

“I’d rather stay, sir,” murmured Jimmy. “Un- 
til it’s over — over here. Then I’ll enjoy it bet- 
ter — over there.” 




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